William Bickerstaff
William Bickerstaff is an artist working in Cambridge. He made his first small drawing in January 2020, exploring a deepening relationship with the landscape around him, and has developed the scale and ambition of the work steadily since, always rooted in an immersive, spiritual and personal response to landscape.
Much of the work is concerned with darkness, and with the way the landscape changes and heightens at either end of the day. He deliberately pursues several ways of working at once, each feeding the other: strongly monochrome pieces in black ink, applied with a fine pen, sprayed, or laid on as dead matt printing ink with a roller or with the finger, alongside expressive colour in gouache.
Artist Statement
In January 2020 I did my first small drawing, exploring a deepening relationship to the landscape around me. Since then, I have been developing the scale and ambition of my work, exploring different approaches, but all rooted in an immersive, spiritual and personal response to landscape.
Many of my images are concerned with darkness, and how the landscape changes and heightens at either end of the day. Writer Robert Macfarlane said "we go into darkness to see." At dawn or dusk, when the world can feel somehow other, the intensity of the landscape is multiplied.
I have actively pursued the idea of multiple ways of working, each feeding the other. Some is strongly monochrome: black ink, fine pen, sprayed, or dead matt printing ink applied with roller or finger, to capture the empty beauty that I find; or expressive colour to reveal the intense and transformative power that is possible when landscape and inscape align.