Original artwork description:

Frank Creber


My paintings stem from personal experiences, allowing me to understand what I've lived through. Creating a painting involves forming a relationship with the subject as it takes shape in the pictorial space. One vivid memory from primary school is visiting a local house and garden, where we learned about an ancient oak tree named Waller’s Oak, after Edmund Waller, who lived there around 1650. At nine, during my paper round, I fell in love with the oversized, almost edible-looking horse chestnut tree leaves. My childhood summers were spent camping, walking, and collecting fossil wood across the UK. My father, a paleobotanist, chose holiday spots where fossil wood could be found or revealed by striking cliffs with a geological hammer. He would later examine these specimens in his attic office, measuring tree rings to contribute to the global understanding of climate change prehistory. This painting portrays another family holiday, this time with our grandchildren, under the soft branches by the freezing river at Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfriesshire.

Materials used:

oil paint

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