Landscape and Imagination: Art, Poetry, and Music Across the 20th Century at Ness Botanic Gardens

A single session at Ness, Saturday 21 November, 10am - 4pm

Overview

Explore how artists, poets and composers have imagined, interpreted and transformed landscape from the Romantic period to today. Across six weeks, this course traces shifting ideas of place, nature, memory and environment through painting, photography, poetry and music. We look at how creative figures — from J.M.W. Turner, Caspar David Friedrich and Constance Mayer to David Hockney, Lee Miller, Olafur Eliasson, Carol Ann Duffy, Alice Oswald, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Grace Williams, Delia Derbyshire, Anna Meredith and Erland Cooper — use landscape to express emotion, identity, conflict and change.
No prior knowledge is required, just an interest in different art forms. By the end of the course, you’ll have a deeper understanding of how landscape inspires the creative imagination, and how art, poetry and music speak to one another across time.

Syllabus

Session 1: 10.30 –10.45am: Welcome & Introduction

Session 2: 10.45 –11.30am: Romantic Beginnings

• Theme: Landscape as emotion, awe and inner life
• Focus: How Romantic artists used landscape to express feeling, imagination and the sublime.

Session 3: 11.45am –12.30pm: Landscape & Modernity

• Theme: When nature meets industry, cities and change
• Focus: How artists responded to the pressures and possibilities of modernity.

Session 4: 1 – 1.45pm: Modernist Experiments

• Theme: Colour, abstraction and new ways of seeing
• Focus: How modernists reimagined landscape through innovation and experimentation.

Session 5: 1.45–2.30pm: War, Memory & the Altered Landscape

• Theme: Landscapes marked by conflict and trauma
• Focus: How landscape becomes a site of memory, witness and reconstruction.

Session 6: 2.45–3.30pm: Postmodern & Pop Landscapes

• Theme: Urban identity, media, technology and everyday landscapes
• Focus: How late 20th century artists expanded the idea of landscape into the urban, digital and everyday.

Session 7: 3.30–4.15pm: Contemporary Visions

• Theme: Ecology, identity, global voices and digital worlds
• Focus: How contemporary creators use landscape to explore ecology, belonging and the future.

4.15–4.30pm — Closing Reflection

Course lecturer

Dr Judith Walsh is a lecturer in modern and contemporary art. Her PhD examined aesthetic, cultural and societal themes and trends of the post war period including the ‘battle’ between figurative and abstract art. Currently working for the University of Liverpool she has also taught extensively for Tate Liverpool, National Museums Liverpool and Liverpool Hope University. She is particularly interested in the collaborative nature of artistic practice and the philosophy of aesthetics and contemporary art in a globalized world. 

Course fee

• Standard fee: £60