Helen Baines, Time-Keeper, 2024, oil on hardback book cover, 12x19cm

"The Pedunculate Oak (Quercus Robur) is one of many ancient trees on the Albury Estate in Surrey. William Cobbett, the popular 18th century journalist and author of 'Rural Rides', was always delighted when he found himself in what he called "the narrow and exquisitely beautiful vale of Chilworth", the deep, wooded valley in which Albury lies. The planting of oaks on this land is attributed to the reign of King John, and this venerable oak with a girth of close to 9 meters is one of the oldest in Surrey, standing with a stately gravitas near an avenue of Spanish Chestnuts in Shere Park (part of Albury Park). Having walked and cycled past this tree many times, I never fail to stop and wonder at its great age and size, to imagine the sureness of effort required to establish its root system deep underground over hundreds of years, unhurriedly pushing its branches skywards whilst the great events of history have played out. The oak continues to grow and adapt as trees are wont to do, providing shelter for birds and wildlife and a fertile environment for mosses, lichens and fungi - its resilience a metaphor for hope in an increasingly uncertain world."

Helen Baines is currently enrolled on a third year of the Turps Correspondence Course. She graduated from Epsom School of Art with a BA (Hons) in Graphic Design and later went on to study printmaking at The Art Academy London. Recent selected exhibitions include the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Royal Scottish Academy Annual Exhibition and the ING Discerning Eye at the Mall Galleries. Her work has been acquired by Art Acumen for Freshfields' Annual Exhibition of works on paper, and is held in private and public collections including the V&A Print Archive and the Scarborough Gallery and Museums Trust. The natural world in all its complexity is at the heart of my practice. It is an intimacy with the landscape and a sense of embeddedness that I am seeking to locate through my work. I'm interested in the stories that imbue landscape with meaning and significance, notions of transcendence; where we end and nature begins, and our own emotional geography. Meditating on our place within the more-than-human world, I enjoy exploring narratives from history, ecology and folklore and shaping them with my own embodied experience of nature.