SUDBURY.- One of British painting’s most exciting new artists, Georg Wilson (b.1998), presents paintings inspired by Gainsborough House’s collection, the surrounding countryside and the history and folklore of the English landscape.

Wilson’s practice follows the changing seasons, incorporating the seasonal flora and fauna of the English countryside. Her paintings imagine an alternative natural world where humans are absent. This body of work seeks to challenge the historic depiction of the British landscape as a tamed, green and pleasant bucolic idyll, parcelled up into private estates. Inspired by Gainsborough’s young love of the Suffolk countryside in which he grew up, these paintings depict another version of the rural landscape that is wild and strange, drawing on walks in the Suffolk landscape and beyond.

The exhibition’s title The Ancient Pulse of Germ and Birth is taken from a line in Thomas Hardy’s (1840-1928) poem The Darkling Thrush. Published in 1900, the poem describes an ‘aged thrush’s’ mighty song in the barren landscape of winter. The birdsong reveals a hidden pulse of nature to the poet.

Hedgerows are a central motif. That typical English boundary marker of tangling hawthorn, hazel or dogwood, divides the landscape between private and publicly accessible land, the wild and the cultivated, and provides a hidden habitat of biodiversity for endangered and rare English flora and fauna, protected within their spiky thickets.

To the artist, the mole is a rebellious creature, a disruptor of pristine lawns and enemy of farmers and gardeners, who takes no heed of land boundaries. Living underground, the mole represents a hidden world often overlooked by humans - its Middle English name ‘mouldywarp’ means ‘earth mover’. As late as the 1910s, amulets made of mole paws were carried in England to ward off various ailments including cramps, and the Roman polymath Pliny the Elder (d.79AD) wrote of using mole entrails for divination. Wilson’s work depicts the mole in its element amongst roots and insects, imagining non-human perspectives that emphasise the strangeness, magic and violence that coexist in nature.

Collectively, the exhibition addresses the changing landscape of England’s species and the loss of biodiversity. She focuses on specific species of birds and plants observed between summer and autumn, including the migratory cuckoo and nightjar, two predatory birds whose arrivals mark the start of summer.

The paintings pay particular attention to native English plants and insects which are often overlooked such as dog rose, hedge woundwort, toads and stag beetles. In drawing these species into her work, Wilson seeks to encourage curiosity and preserve declining knowledge of the natural world.

Underling (After Gainsborough) is a transcription of Gainsborough’s portrait of John Plampin (probably about 1752) in the National Gallery. “My painting replaces Pamplin and his dog with a creature and a mole, reworking it from a depiction of a landowner and his territory into a wild realm from which humans are absent, punctured by mole hills and dissolved of land boundaries. The creature is enveloped in curling roots and vines against the tree in a symbiotic tangle.”

The exhibition features several works painted on copper, a new medium in Georg’s practice. She says: “I was inspired to try painting on copper because my favourite historical artists from the Northern European Renaissance (Cranach, Breughel) painted on copper. Each brushstroke sits on the gleaming copper surface without absorbing, allowing for jewel-like detail. After producing a few etchings, I was attracted to the pinkish glow of the copper surface. My work is also often inspired by English 18th century engravings which were made with a copper plate, so the paintings hark back to this historical reference.”

Calvin Winner, Director of Gainsborough’s House says: “Georg Wilson has uncovered a dark underworld within the English landscape. A strong sense of place informs her practice, but these are alternative landscapes—realms of other worlds inhabited by wildlings and creatures that are enchanting, fascinating and, at times, unsettling. Wilson’s paintings reflect her interest in the complex histories of landscape and plant life in Britain, exploring the marginalisation of wild places and our fractured understanding of plant knowledge. Gainsborough's House is proud to present Wilson's first solo museum exhibition, featuring a series of new paintings.”