They have their own story.
Some of them have been there so much longer than we have been there
and will be there... outlive all of us.
You lose that sense of time and you're suddenly surrounded
by all these new smells and these sounds of the birds
and the sounds of those branches when they creak.
It just is like a whole amazing thing for the senses.
That's what I'm trying. I'm trying to get that feeling of...
the mystery of it.
Whenever I walk into a woods, I always feel
that I'm entering into a different pattern of time or something.
the way light is chopped up by the leaves.
It feels like the moment itself is chopped up a little bit
and lots of different moments are almost held within the envelope
of that little forest in quite a magical way.
It's actually quite hard to envisage an environment without trees
and their habitats and what they mean and how they behave.
It's a rich, creative world
and I can't think that anybody's life is worse off for having trees in it.
Part of improving it for wildlife is increased number of trees.
Because trees do quite useful things, don't they?
Anyone got any ideas what trees do?
We as Muslims believe we are custodians,
caretakers of the Earth.
So we're hoping that by planting a tree,
we will benefit the Earth and it will preserve it for future generations.
If a Muslim plants a tree, and a bird, an animal or a child
benefits from it then it will be classed as a charitable act.
And it's an act that doesn't stop -
it can carry on even till the hereafter.
I suppose I connect trees with memory really, and with time.
And maybe even learning about time.
A is for Apple. A is for Acorn.
Maybe there's some dim connection in my head
between trees and alphabets and books and learning.
I'm particularly interested in the relationship
between people and trees.
I know probably a few hundred of the trees in this plantation
personally.
I revisit the same tree and think, "How are you today?
Are you springtime yet?
I want to know when the tree first produces its first flowers.
It's like a farmer having lambs.
It's that same thrill of seeing new life isn't it?
I have to try and get this right
'cause it's a really good quote about nature.
"Still, nature is the fountain's head,
the source from whence all must originally spring
and should an artist continue his practice without referring to nature
he must soon form a manner."
And that's what I was finding was happening with my work.
I was like, "Actually my work is becoming incredibly mannered."
So I went into the middle of the rainforest
and did a residency in the jungle.
And didn't intend on it
becoming the whole rest of my practice...
well not forever, but up until now.
And just fell in love with these landscapes.
And I came home and after being in this place
where my eyes were completely opened
to the twists of the branches and the curls and the leaves,
and when I was looking at my own landscape
and all these woodlands around me,
it was like I was looking at them for the first time.
And so it continued this inspiration that I had to paint them.
"It was Monday, Bank Holiday, near the end of May,
rough middle of the day, year and of the country
if the country is England.
Oak apple or oak and nettle day,
axis of my year thinly plotted as my tree -
the far end of our thinning garden, in a border shaped to waver
like a child's drawing of sea.
Its clock-handed Y where the trunk parted ways,
a first rung, that even just turned seven I step onto,
into the above, this wobbly earth above earth.
Wordlessly I knew then, I'd later be gone,
like possibly my tree has, from that border,
and my attention divided thinly as the light,
or is that time, through the green-grey space I was sitting in
as I reached up for a branch, or is it balance, or vantage?
On this tentative level. A story."
How did it feel to plant a tree?
Something to be proud of, yeah.
Cool.