Anna Dillon’s Wessex Airscapes: Elevating Wiltshire

Step into Wiltshire Museum in Devizes before October 15th and you’ll be treated to an exhibition which will make you look at the beautiful views most of us drive past daily in a whole new colourful and graphical context…..

The exhibition, titled Wessex Airscapes: Elevating Wiltshire by artist Anna Dillon and drone photographer Hedley Thorne is certainly unique. The former being the astoundingly distinctive landscape artist whose painting turned my head ascending the stairs of the Bluestone Gallery, once of Swan Yard in Devizes. Through its unique characteristic bordering graphics, I immediately recognised her print used on an album cover by Woodbrough folk ensemble, the Yirdbards.

Something I’ve been toying with since, this dividing line between art and graphic design, for the first few terms on a graphics course in art college we were subjected to a vigorous routine of life and still life drawing to perfect sketching and painting as a fine artist, prior to exploring more graphical theories like typography and design.

Hereafter never the twain shall meet, and I wished I’d ventured down the fine art avenue rather than graphics (too late now!) Within her work, though, Anna straddles this divide; capturing the perennial spatial character of our local landscape, its topographical quiddity, yet of clear line and bold colours, a manner not usually attributed to landscape art.

The wonderful contours of the sarsen dropstone impressions, folds and rolling meadows and agricultural plough lines across the Marlborough Downs, are all depicted as the gestural line found in graphic design, and the result is extraordinary. I was dying to know how Anna defined it, as fine art or graphics.

“I’m quite a messy person in life,” Anna confessed. “But when it comes to painting it’s the neatest, so very controlled, because I was trained as a graphic designer and illustrator for about fifteen years,” she confirmed, showing me some abstract monoprints which she hoped would highlight her graphic training. “So, I think when I then became a painter, I did paintings, but not both, but now, yes, you can see the graphics side, the neatness, and I like that, I like that control, I don’t know why.”

Unaware this is Anna and Hedley’s second ‘Airscapes’ exhibition, the first, at Radley College in 2021, showcased Oxfordshire and Berkshire landscapes, I supposed the Wiltshire landscape to be perfect to capture graphically, as further west the hillsides are steeper and rugged, further east is flatter. “Ah,” she expressed, “the only regret I have is that I feel like I haven’t painted enough, there’s so much of Wiltshire, this is two years of work, but I feel like there’s so much more to explore.”

The style of this series of aerial landscapes has seen a natural progression, Anna pointing out an earlier Avebury work from 2009, “the colours are much more vibrant, I don’t think I would paint it like that now, even the trees are stylised.” Though clearly the origin of the recent paintings displayed is here; the graphic distinction is lucid, whereas now it’s much more refined, integrated with the standards of either watercolour or oil landscapes, the grass, bracken and trees details bear realism, whilst the clouds retain this solid format. “I see shapes in the clouds,” Anna expressed, “they become sculptural form, for me, and they’re estranged, so as you’re exploring it, you’re trying to go with the shapes; it’s all about shapes, colours and contrasts.” 

Overall you maintain this fantastical imagery of what one could imagine to be a “toytown” version of the Wiltshire landscape, ideal for a children’s book illustration, but I say this is with the highest calibre, and compliment, of course. In fact, Anna’s work has featured in several books.

“It’s more of a subtle pallet,” was how Anna described her latest work, “I’ve used darker colours,” and she veered off onto knowing when to finish a piece and not continuously add touches, “because you get a bit blind to it, being in the studio day in day out, you can get a bit, not stale, but sometimes you can overwork a painting or underwork one too.”

See, that’s an artist who cross examines their painting in the studio for an age, not a graphic designer who, governed by the industry, is encouraged to hastily knock a piece of work out and get onto the next job. “I did like graphic design,” Anna explained, “but I didn’t find the work had any value, it’s kind of throwaway,” though she did show me her logo for a river trust, in which there was a clear relationship to that of her landscape paintings. It is so gorgeously original, it has to be seen to understand.

The exhibit is backed by Hedley Thorne’s breathtaking low altitude aerial photography the paintings are worked from, and they are joined by Anna’s father, Patrick Dillon, who has written the exhibition book, along with contributing a small display of artefacts and documents. 

In all, the exhibit would excite anyone interested in heritage, local cultural-historical artefacts or geographical topography, to artists and graphic designers alike, or indeed anyone interested in viewing a different approach to a classic standard, within landscapes you will recognise, as in so much as a cartoonist’s line is akin to a signature, instantly recognisable as their own, so too are these impressive individually stylised works; well worth a visit.  

---