I’ve always loved it when I’ve seen a slice through a sequoia tree with tags that show where within the tree rings Christ was born, when America was contacted by Europeans, etc. And way out towards the very edge our current moment is somewhere in the bark of this enormous, enormous piece of wood. It has always really struck me as being the most graphic illustration of our time on the planet compared to the fact that nature just gets on with it. I’m hoping people will understand that we can’t actually survive without nature. We are technically clever enough to destroy the world. Let’s hope we are intelligent enough to preserve it! Because many of the paintings are actually quite beautiful, I hope people will come away uplifted too and not just depressed that they haven’t got long compared to a giant sequoia tree. GB | I’m pretty sure it will. This is obviously not your experience, but when I last lived in England, I had a house in the Norfolk Village of Bawdeswell, the deeds of which went back to 1501 and described an existing building called the Crown Inn. It’s now called Chaucer House because the uncle of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer lived there when he was rector of the Bawdeswell Parish. So the deeds take us back to 1501 and the uncle’s time there to about 1350. But around the time we moved in (1983), I read somewhere that each different plant in an English hedgerow represents a hundred years. So I went out to my garden hedgerow, and I counted 10 plants, which meant that the house may be 500 or 600 years old, but the hedge was 1,000 years old. TF | Oh, how wonderful. That’s fantastic. That’s very satisfying, isn’t it? GB | Yeah. Yeah, really. Tony, you mentioned that Jane Woodward was inspired enough by your work to establish the Foster Art & Wilderness Foundation and the Museum, the mission of which is to inspire in people the connection to art, nature, and the protection of place. Is there anything beyond this that you would personally like the visitor to take away from Exploring Time? TF | I’ve always had trouble with this because I haven’t got an elevator pitch. Every time I have to explain it to people, you know, I can see them kind of glazing over and say, oh my God, I don’t know what he is talking about. But when they come to my studio, having been told what the show is about, and then I show them the pictures, they suddenly get it. They have this lightbulb moment. I hope that people will have their own lightbulb moments when they see the paintings and figure out what the connections are to the theme of the show and the concept behind it. But I guess from my point of view, the amount of time I’ve spent, often on my own, in these wild places, has made me realize my insignificance in the context of all of nature. We are living in an age of bombast and belligerence, so what I am hoping is that people will come away with a sense of humility about our place in the whole sweep of Earth’s history and an understanding that we are part of nature and not simply dominating it. The amount of time I’ve spent, often on my own, in these wild places, has made me realize my insignificance in the context of all of nature. We are living in an age of bombast and belligerence so what I am hoping is that people will come away with a sense of humility about our place in the whole sweep of Earth’s history and an understanding that we are part of nature and not simply dominating it. — TONY FOSTER 21
