Downland: Paintings by Anna Dillon, Poems by Jonathan Davidson
Downland is a unique collaboration celebrating the landscape of the North Wessex Downs as seen through the eyes of artist Anna Dillon and poet Jonathan Davidson. Featuring twenty paintings, this is the first extensive publication in book form of Anna Dillon’s vibrant and colourful work. The artworks are complemented by a series of poems from Jonathan Davidson, inspired both by the paintings and by the landscape. Taken together they form a kind of guidebook in paintings and poetry to the most popular stretch of The Ridgeway National Trail. The book includes a map pinpointing the locations that inspired the paintings and the poems.
The poems and paintings in Downland cover a distance of around 35 miles along The Ridgeway, one of Europe’s oldest tracks. Moving from Wiltshire just south of Swindon to where the River Thames cuts through the chalk escarpment in South Oxfordshire, the route passes extraordinary ancient sites, including Wayland’s Smithy and the Uffington White Horse. The views north look across to the towns of Wantage, Didcot and Wallingford and south towards the Kennet Valley Known variously as the White Horse Downs, the Berkshire Downs and the Wessex Downs, it is an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty that has inspired writers and painters for centuries.
Locations featured in the paintings and poems include: Lammy Down; Wayland’s Smithy; Uffington; Ram’s Hill Coombe; Sparsholt Down; Segsbury Camp; Old Down; Bury Down; Lowbury Hill; Lid Hill; The Icknield Way; Unhill Woods and Kingstanding Hill.