5th: Walthamstow Wetlands – London

This place is just incredible. This huge, fantastic wetland is just a 25-minute tube ride from central London. In fact, it’s the largest urban wetland in Europe, that also just happens to act as a reservoir for a significant number of residents. We had travelled up from South London on the day before when we had visited a couple of other reserves, Hutchinson’s Bank and Sydenham Hill Wood. Sadly, the weather had been completely set against us on those visits, preventing us from getting the best of the reserves. We had persisted (I really don’t want to be a fair-weather artist!) walking through butterfly meadows in the cold and wind and woodland in the pouring rain. All the while I was thinking that it would be good to do a piece of art capturing the wet and cold conditions, but inspiration hasn’t struck on that one yet.

So, here we found ourselves at Walthamstow wetlands surrounded by life of all shapes and sizes. Spring was most definitely in the air, there was new growth stretching out to the sunshine that had replaced the rain clouds of the previous day, goslings and nesting birds were all over the place. Suddenly inspiration was everywhere.

On the day itself, I had about 5 ideas for pieces. The main one however, was a picture showing the atmosphere and scale of the wetlands, plus their proximity to the urban sprawl of London. Therefore, that was the one I sketched on the day. However, upon returning to the studio and reviewing the sketch and my photographs I ended up with a shortlist of 12 ideas! One of the key things that struck me was the similarity in shape of the skyline of lots of urban, high-rise living and one of the many islands in the reserve, so this is the main idea I’m now working with. It shows the beauty and importance of the work done by the Trusts and how it hinges on the way we need to find a way of living alongside and in harmony with nature.