CONFISCATED

CORNWALL, UK, 2025

Cornwall is full of aliens. The mild, almost subtropical, warm air from the Gulf of Mexico creates much rain and seldom frost. This unique climate creates conditions suitable for many non-native plant species to thrive.

Urban parks are green cities within cities. Melting pots of foreign flora from all parts of the world. Jumbled and mismatched together, creating a botanical circus. As an artist, I always look for juxtaposition. Often between man-made and natural. At base, this fits that description. Go deeper, and one realises it doesn't. 

It's a juxtaposition between tape and a tree. Man-made versus natural, right? No. It's a relationship between two man-made subjects. Man-made tape and an alien tree, displaced and re-placed by man, in a park managed by man.

My beautiful country has a facade of wilderness. She wears a mask of green fields. Beneath that mask lay millennia of human-controlled landscape. Forests are plantations. Rivers are canals. Meadows are pasture. Parks are unnatural spaces, maintained by man, full of plants that aren't meant to be there. 

This is problematic not only for the wilderness-avid artist. But there's always a silver lining. It allows the artist to work on plants they've never seen. Although they take up space from native plants, these aliens are beautiful. They deserve to have their beauty encapsulated by the artist.  

"AS AN ARTIST, I ALWAYS LOOK FOR JUXTAPOSITION.

–JACOB J. WATSON-HOWLAND

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