Julian Perry: The County of Elms

To coincide with our new permanent exhibition Constable at Gainsborough’s House we are delighted to display a solo exhibition by landscape painter Julian Perry.

Throughout his career, Julian has observed and recorded the changing face of the British landscape. He is inspired by and responds to environmental issues that impact the natural world.

This exhibition displays Julian’s most recent works, which examine the East Anglian landscape also known as ‘Constable Country’. His complex and highly crafted studies of diseased trees and eroding cliffs depict the ever-changing face of rural Suffolk. Before the devastating effects of Dutch elm disease, Suffolk had one of the highest number of Elm trees in the country, and was known affectionately as the ‘County of Elms’. Superficially it may seem that this landscape has changed little since Constable’s time. However, habitat loss, species decline and climate changes are having a profound and ongoing impact on the environment.

Julian explains: “As a child I witnessed the catastrophic death of twenty million English elm trees. For many years the huge dead trees stood as towering witness to what can happen if things go very wrong. For me, trees are a visual signifier of what can be good or bad about our relationship with the natural world”.

Julian Perry was born in Worcester 1960. He studied at Berkshire College of Art and Design and at Bristol Polytechnic, graduating in Fine Art in 1981. He now divides his time between East London and the small Suffolk coastal village of Dunwich.

Julian has exhibited widely thoroughout his career and has won many prizes including the Arts Council and British Council awards. In 2015 he exhibited in the prestigious Venice Biennale. His works feature in many public and private collections.