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Forests of the mind: spectres of deforestation in contemporary English aesthetics

This article explores some of the ways in which the natural environment – its management and exploitation – has informed artistic imagination and production in England in recent years. Laura Ouillon outlines of the state of English woodlands today, incorporating the research of art historians and cultural geographers to demonstrate that trees in England have become scarcer and scarcer. As a result, Ouillon reflects, the English relationship to forests is marked by a sense of lack and loss. This informs her analysis of a number of contemporary works of art and the peculiar form of environmental melancholia that imbues them. In particular, Ouillon examines the notion of ‘tree portraits’, in reference to the work Tacita Dean, Mat Collishaw, Lucian Freud and Alex Egan.