The House of Art and Nature

The House of Art and Nature brings to Abberton Reservoir a new collection of drawings by Cy Baker, made over several trips to Bottengoms.

Baker draws with a Bic biro on raw linen canvas, washed first with a white oil paint wash, then varnished and worked back into with white oil paint to add the light. He came to the method after years of painting, and the appeal, in his own words, is that nothing comes between him and the art: no pausing to sharpen anything or recharge a brush, only him, the canvas and his pen, which gives up only after about two miles of drawing.

He was named David Shepherd Wildlife Artist of the Year in 2022, having been Highly Commended the year before, and took the Society of Graphic Fine Art's Dry Red Press Award in 2021. His solo show at the Mall Galleries in London in 2023 sold all but one of its thirteen works and raised more than £15,000 for the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation, and he has raised over £52,000 for wildlife conservation in Uganda, India and the UK. He describes his job as an artist as spreading the message of how valuable, beautiful and fragile our planet is, and doing that while raising money for conservation.

Bottengoms is a 16th century yeoman farmer's house at Wormingford, in the Stour Valley. It was the home of the nature writer Ronald Blythe, who was given it by his friends the artists John and Christine Nash, and who left it to Essex Wildlife Trust on his death in 2023. His wish was that the estate become a nature reserve and include a studio to inspire writers, artists, photographers and historians. Bottengoms itself is not open to the public.