Tim Freeman’s work is steeped in the Romantic traditions of landscape. We imagine him traversing these hills and passing through the scenes that he depicts. His visual language refers to three places that correspond to three distinct times in his life; he was born in the new-beginning frontiers of Canada and grew up there before moving to his parents native Yorkshire with it's wilder, industrially scarred landscape, finally his last decade in the remote ancient landscapes and industrial cities of Wales. In all three he has maintained a strong connection with the landscape that he inhabits and the focus of his work is largely in these areas.

The Romantic ideal of the landscape has remained constant throughout subsequent urban development; the ideal therefore has grown as a fiction. Psychologically the country has become a part of the city in that it is a place to escape to, a vessel for the stress of being in the city. It is in the city that the country becomes a haven for freedom, the abyss yawns and the oblivion of relief takes us away from the nine to five. It is a place to spend leisure time, to visit on a day off and marvel at ‘things’ ranging from open woodlands to country houses. Silence, broken only by a soft breeze and the song of birds.

If the landscape is singular in its image then the city is multiple; it is ever changing both as a microcosm for society and as a physical space. If the city is change then the country is conservation, held perpetually in our psyche as an idyll of tranquility.

We frame this view and preserve it, we depict it as part of our natural heritage. We compose the picture-perfect and it follows certain rules. These rules make it worthy of being depicted; they make it picturesque. This concept shapes how we see the landscape around us, framed, edited, arranged and selected; it is a concept that we know without thinking about it, based around the instinctual golden-mean that strikes invisible guidelines through the things that we see.

Ultimately it springs from an idealised human shape. The proportion from one eye to another, from the forefinger to the arm, six heads high; it is a system of measurement that we impose on everything around us. Early measurements were based around the human body, literally one foot in front of the other, around how much one hand could hold, how wide our reach. We are the centre of the universe that we build around us, a universe that we measure, shape and change as it bends to our will and makes us comfortable in our own skin. A third, two thirds wherever we place things we are governed by our subservience (or denial) of these rules.

A picture, then, is shaped from them: It has a horizon, not in the centre, but above or below as we expect. There will be a feature in the left or right that draws us in, perhaps it is framed by overhanging branches or the threatening/ celestial clouds overhead. We will stand unobserved from where we are and look over the view, there are no eyes that look back, we own this viewpoint momentarily. There may be a dwelling, a shack, a cottage or some standing stones, a bent tree or somesuch. There will not be crowds, communities or camaraderie. For this to function we need to stand alone, disconnected and separate from the people that surround us. There may be a ‘way in’ from our vantage point, a road or a stream will take us from the point at which we are viewing to a point deeper within the picture plane. We are not trapped, we can, should we choose, move into the frame that we have built.

Tim also follows these rules, but the elements that he combines make it difficult to place these images. Industrial mechanisms and constructions sit happily in otherwise unspoilt landscapes, alongside trees and lakes. It is unclear whether nature is reclaiming ‘brown’ land or whether the images exists in a future/past where the two elements are no longer in conflict and manmade interventions sit within the landscape as naturally as a Victorian viaduct, a shack or a bridge does today. The layers that create each image are built from potentially three different locations which gives us a geographic uncertainty and he adds to this in his use of technology. Images are collected using differing older models of camera, as well as digital images from the present day. The limited focus of older lenses and the nostalgic nod to different formats – rounded corners, contact printing and monochromatic mezzotint printing style - contributes to these collages of time and adds to this temporal uncertainty.

It is easy to be seduced by the sleight of hand trickery of digital manipulation but Freeman does not indulge in cheap tricks. His use of layers seems more closely aligned with a painting tradition than with slick advertising world gimmickry. Each decision he makes has a rationale, it has sincerity and it is this integrity that allows us to rest momentarily and accept his seamless co-existence of the contradictory.

Text by, Anthony Shapland of, g39 Gallery.