Zoe Benbow: Forest Path

Forest Paths brings together a body of works that invite a more reflective view into the wilderness. Zoe Benbow’s landscapes encourage us to explore our own countryside through interpretation and memory.

The exhibition showcases works that are rooted in direct observation of the British landscape, including Grasmere, Lake District and forests in Warwickshire. Locations are not realised literally, but reworked over extended periods of time in Benbow’s studio through referencing photographs and drawings made in situ. Each painting moves away from realism and towards more reflective interpretations.

Using this technique as foundation along with exploring the language of oil paint, Benbow develops each work into compositions that evoke landscapes as they are remembered rather than observed directly. Fleeting impressions, partial recollections, and shifting perceptions in the paintings reflect how our emotional relationship to the natural world is shaped not just by what we see, but by how we remember it.

There is, within this approach, a quiet affinity with poetry. These works do not seek to describe the landscape in full, but instead offer fragments - moments of light, structure, and atmosphere - through which a larger image is suggested. It is through these fragments that the viewer is invited to re-imagine and bring their own experiences into the work.

Forest Paths becomes not only a reflection on landscape, but a reflection on the ways in which it is perceived and remembered.