In The Pathless Woods: John Caple
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, George Gordon Byron
The paintings in the this exhibition are images that were suggested by lines from three poems, two by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind and Mont Blanc, and what has come to be known as ‘There is Pleasure in the Pathless Woods’, the one hundred-and-seventy-eighth verse of the much larger poem, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, by Byron.
All three are concerned with finding meaning by looking at Nature. In the poems it is portrayed as wild, mysterious, benevolent and cruel, but also a refuge and teacher if approached in solitude, through the imagination or in a state of reverie. The feeling of isolation, that fear of being lost in the pathless woods, forces us to connect with the natural world, and so to ourselves.
When I started these paintings early in 2020 I had no idea how much these same themes would change in my mind and take on new meaning over the months ahead.
John Caple
