Mark Frith: a legacy of ancient oaks
(Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, £30) IN 2010, MARK FRITH embarked on his first drawing of a great old English oak—the ‘fantastical giant, impossibly old’ Great oak at Nibley Green, which he had explored as a boy. This led to a commission from the late publisher, poet and tree lover Felix Dennis, resulting in 20 portraits of Britain’s ancient oaks that highlight the architectural beauty of the winter tree, with ‘every twig and gnarl’ rendered in graphite.
Dennis donated 10 drawings to the royal Botanic Gardens Kew and 10 to The Heart of England, the charity he set up to create a 30,000 acre forest. The full series can be seen until March 17 at the shirley sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens (020–8332 5000; www.kew. org). The accompanying book reproduces all the drawings, interspersed with poems, quotes or lines from the artist, a gazetteer and an essay on Drawing Trees by Emma Crichton-miller.