I Become A (Middle-Aged) Master

A couple of years later I took a part-time Master of Arts degree at Leeds Metropolitan University and was able to think my ideas through more rigorously; this culminated in a series of reliefs which I called Icons (17,18,19), under the general heading of the Mythology of Landscape. (Mythology in the sense used by Roland Barthes, ie anything that becomes institutionalised and seen as 'natural' is a mythology.) I was able to study the effect the classical tradition has had on landscape and landscape painting in this country and how these are viewed. I also became interested in other ways in which the landscape was viewed in the eighteenth century; for example, by means of the Claude Lorraine Mirror (20). Using this device, the spectator looked at the landscape through a mirror made of darkened glass so that it appeared in the sombre tones of a painting by Claude. Of course, the viewer would have to turn his back on the landscape itself in order to see its image in the glass - lots of scope for symbolism there! (See About My Work for more on this.)

While all this was going on I was continuing teaching and our children were working through school, college and university, leaving home and finding work - and partners. At the same time Sheila was developing her flower arranging talents as a sought-after demonstrator and we were both pursuing our joint hobby of walking. Apart from regular day walks in the Lake District, North Yorkshire Moors and Yorkshire Dales, we began backpacking Long Distance Paths. The Dales Way was our first, then the Pennine Way, the Coast to Coast Walk and others; we ventured abroad and walked the Tour of Mont Blanc and scaled our first Alp.