Richard Bavin: Artist-in-Residence

New studio, new project: I'll be 70 in 2027 and that feels like the right time to step down from my volunteer position as resident artist with Herefordshire Wildlife Trust. By then I will have been in the role for 12 years!

What I love to paint more than anything is woodland light and the ever changing moods created by season and weather. So, I'm embarking on a watercolour series looking at my 'home turf' at Queenswood and the Trust's nature reserves on the Doward (SW edge of Herefordshire), leading to a fundraising show for the Trust in October 2027. If you spot me out with my easel over the next 2 years, do say hello.

Meanwhile, my greetings cards are back on sale in Queenswood shop including some new designs.

As you wander by the river, can you see that single, towering tree leaning to one side? Pluck a glossy leaf, heart-shaped and tapering to a long point; scrunch it in your hand to reveal a faint smell of balsam. Run your fingers across the deeply fissured trunk to discover the knobbly bosses characteristic of this species. Look into the canopy to find the candelabra clusters of twigs and leaves.

Richard is making a series of portraits of native black poplars around the county, from sapling to ancient, to celebrate this magnificent tree and raise awareness of its plight. Once common on floodplains and wet areas, drainage of the land for agriculture has meant the tree has slowly disappeared from the landscape. A recent survey estimated that 7000 black poplars remain in England, Wales and Ireland, of which only 600 are female and vital to the survival of the species. In Herefordshire we are lucky to have a small but dedicated group of volunteers working to save this endangered species, supported by Herefordshire Wildlife Trust and the tree warden network. Work includes recording, assessing and caring for existing trees, planting new trees and DNA analysis to identify clones where funds permit. 

Richard's drawings will be exhibited at Queenswood Arboretum in early October 2026, and a local poet has been invited to contribute her own responses to some of the trees. Events are planned including a talk and drawing workshop. 

See Richard’s drawings here 

Find out more about the Black Poplar Project here

Richard has been working in partnership with the City Branch and Marion Laws at the Apple Store Gallery to look at the nature reserves around Hereford city, especially the Yazor Brook restoration. 

Richard’s own work is a series of very small paintings (20 X 20cm) on thick watercolour paper from his many walks along the brook in the last eighteen months. Every visit brought delightful encounters with wildlife and signs that the natural world is recovering in the centre of our city, and he enjoyed many conversations with other local people who treasure it as he does (Richard now works from a studio very close to the brook). But alas every visit made him despair at the way the brook is repeatedly and deliberately polluted by untreated sewage, industrial run off, road silt, fly-tipping, careless littering and other human spoliations. Our brook is too valuable to let this go on happening! He decided to try and paint these spoliations with the same attention he might bring to a tree or flower, and all the paintings will be shown unframed, exposed and vulnerable just as the Yazor Brook is. Richard always donates 10% from sales to Herefordshire Wildlife Trust but in this case it will be 30%.

View the series here

Richard Bavin joined with Marion Campbell and David Laws, who run the Apple Store Gallery and artists’ studios in Hereford, to organise an exhibition and events about our county’s wildflower meadows, with a special focus on the Trust’s flagship reserve at Birches Farm. Twelve visual artists and four poets from Herefordshire and the borders were invited to contribute, and they began the project in June 2019.

The project culminated in several events in the summer of 2021: an exhibition at the Apple Store Gallery, an evening of poetry readings, also at Apple Store Gallery, a celebration of National Meadows Day at Birches Farm - a mixture of wildlife walks, poetry walks, drop-in drawing and an exhibition in The Barn and a further exhibition at Made in the Marches gallery in Kington. A book of the poetry created as part of project was published, with thanks to funding from the Elmley Foundation with a My Place grant. (Available here.)

Richard spent time at these three, very different nature reserves over two years - and created many beautiful paintings.

Throughout 2016, Richard was our Artist in Residence in Lea & Paget's Wood an ancient broadleaved woodland in the Wye valley which is owned by Herefordshire Wildlife Trust. He worked in the wood for 2-3 days each month and developed these studies into a series of drawings and paintings in his studio. This residency culminated in a solo exhibition at the Apple Store Gallery in Hereford in 2017.

Richard says about his work:
"Trees have always filled me with joy and wonder and I can be absorbed for hours in simply looking. Every tree, great or small, has its own character and presence, and walking in woodland is a deeply restorative pleasure in any weather.

Most of my drawings and paintings depict specific trees and woodland in Herefordshire. My starting point is always to spend time walking or sitting quietly with sketchbook and camera amid the mud, wind, birds and midges. The act of drawing intensifies the experience and I feel fully alive! Patience and perseverance are rewarded by extraordinary moments when a scene is made astonishingly beautiful by some shift of light or weather. In the studio I distill these encounters and records into paintings, aiming to share what I have seen and felt as faithfully as possible with the viewer.

It breaks my heart to see how rapidly Britain’s trees and woodland are succumbing to development and the ravages of pollution and disease, and I am involved in campaigning locally and nationally. But in my practice as an artist I choose to go on making paintings which delight in the myriad ways in which trees enrich our world and ourselves. At the end of my life I hope that my work will not be a eulogy for what we have lost but a celebration."

During h.Art 2016, Richard led a public art event to create a 4 metre wide canvas, Heart of the Wood, depicting Lea and Paget’s Wood in summer. The painting features a magnificent oak pollard which is gradually hollowing out and shrinking down as it ages.

102 people aged from 3 to 85, and an enthusiastic dog, helped to create the painting, if you look carefully you can find a paw print and several boot prints! The canvas was laid on the ground and built up in layers of semi-transparent paint which means that every person’s contribution is there. Richard has then unified the image by applying glazes of thin colour and touches of detail.

Proceeds from the sale of the painting will be donated to Herefordshire Wildlife Trust.