Looking at trees gives us a chance to examine ourselves and our place in history, says Yorkshire artist who has documented the area's ancient trees

It presents a series of 10  intricate digital drawings of the oldest trees at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, created over the last year as part of Wade’s documentation of ancient and veteran trees using the Woodland Trust’s Ancient Tree Inventory. This inventory is a record of some of the most important trees in the UK, which the Woodland Trust ask people to contribute to by populating their map. Spending time at YSP in different seasons, Wakefield-based Wade made drawings of trees both with and without their foliage.

These include an ancient ash, veteran common sycamores, an ancient field maple and veteran beeches, some of which are aged between 300 and 400 years.

"Having studied at Bretton hall the Yorkshire Sculpture Park is like my second home,” says Wade. “And I noticed that it had more veteran and ancient trees than anywhere else in the district and so I thought I’d draw them.”

Using a tablet and stylus allowed him to zoom in to achieve a level of detail not possible with pen and ink on paper. Working partly in his studio with reference sketches and photographs, Wade completed the drawings whilst sitting in front of each tree, gradually refining the textures, lighting and composition.

Wade studied Fine Art at Bretton Hall College in the 1980s and currently has a studio at The Art House. Through painting, sculpture, drawing, light and music, his practice celebrates the everyday. He focuses on details that are often overlooked in the world around us and highlights the incredibly special things within them.

He often works within communities to facilitate access to art and spark moments of creativity. As part of Keepers of Time, Wade spent time with the Wakefield-based Appletree Ladies Group to explore and document trees within their local area and at YSP.

The artist has also donated a drawing which has been produced as a limited edition, with all proceeds benefitting YSP’s work.

Wade explains: “This is a project that is very close to my heart and I am delighted to be returning to YSP to introduce Keepers of Time to a new audience. I want the works to invite us all to take a moment to notice the remarkable and sometimes unsung beauty that surrounds us. Because all the work I do is about landscape eventually you have to do trees. No matter what you do when you are painting a landscape you will end up painting trees.”

The process for creating the Keepers of Time series was stretched over several months and involved sketching the trees both in winter and the summer of 2024. "I used new digital techniques to capture the finest of details of these amazing species,” says Wade. “I drew the trees in winter between February and April 2024 - without the foliage you really get to see their forms better; ancient and veteran trees have a fascinating lack of symmetry. I then sketched the same trees between May and September. The summer trees were sketched from the same position but there were so many differences, including new growth and the lowering of branches due to the weight of the leaves.  All in all, it was quite a long process, but the trees take their time and so did I.”

The tree drawings that he made for the earlier 'Solitary Tree’ series (which documented occurrences of single trees in agricultural fields) were done in pen and ink, in sketch books. “As I began documenting the trees at YSP I couldn’t get the desired detail with ink; I tried finer and finer drawing pens, eventually working with a 0.03mm nib. Unfortunately, my hands were unable to make accurate marks at that small a scale.

“The drawings for Keepers of Time were all created digitally on an iPad using an Apple pencil and the drawing app. This meant that I could zoom into certain areas of the trees to capture that never ending, fractal like nature.

“This allowed me to explore the trees as a series of abstract elements and enabled me to use more vigorous mark making, something that I couldn’t do with pen and paper on a small scale – I could draw with my whole arm rather than the tiniest movements between thumb and finger.

“I decided to work only with a black technical pen and an eraser from all the tools available on the drawing app as I still wanted these pieces to be created using a single mark making tool onto a surface. If I wanted something to be lighter, I would erase the black marks to reveal the white of the ‘page’.

“The process of drawing started on site at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, I like working outside. Once I’d identified the tree I was going to sketch, I’d make a few notes and rough outlines in a notebook, trying to find the aspect of the tree I thought best captured its shape and character. Rough shapes were sketched in on the iPad to mark what I believe to be the tree’s most important lines. I’d also take reference photographs of various elements of the trees - the texture of the trunk, how the leaves were lit etc.

"These drawings were then worked on at my studio for approximately six to eight hours (more time was spent on the summer canopies), to get in the shape and light right. Finally, I would revisit the tree at the sculpture park to complete the drawing. This was the most enjoyable part of the drawing process as I prefer to be outside.”

Wade says he likes to encourage people to look at things in more detail than they normally would. "I believe that the places we live in are full of beauty and things we can find great joy in. The reason I live goin gin to great detail is because of their longevity we don't tend to realise that we are looking at something beyond our own timescale.

“When we are looking at these trees we can contemplate a bit of history. It might be a tree that started growing in the Elizabethan era and when you think of it in those terms you realise you are looking at a part of history, but it is also something that will probably live beyond your own lifespan. "Looking at trees gives us a chance to examine ourselves and our place in history. They also document how a landscape has changed over the years.”

Wade is also passionate about trees in urban areas. "There’s an avenue of lime trees in Wakefield they’ve been there for about 200 years and it’s beautiful green space. We tend to plant these trees as a temporary measure but if we let them grow they provide so much shade, they are better for the environment and they are better for people’s wellbeing.

"I want to encourage people to treat them more seriously, we can leave them and have a better city centre as well as countryside if we just let the trees grow more.”

People can access the trees and their Ordnance Survey map location on Wade’s website so people can go and see the trees he has drawn and catalogued.

But it isn’t just trees that Wade catalogues.

"I do a similar thing with buildings and structures. There’s a viaduct that goes through the centre of Wakefield that most people don’t know about. It’s called the 99 Arches. So being me I want to know why it is called the 99 Arches. I went and counted them and there are actually 111. I drew every archway. It might be manmade but it is still part of our landscape.”

Tony Wade: Keepers of Time is at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park until July 27

tonywadeart.com