Keepers of Time at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

I’m very excited to say that Keepers of Time will now have an exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in the visitor’s centre from Saturday 15 February to Sunday 13 July 2025.

The exhibition will feature some of the drawings I made in 2024 of the ancient and veteran trees to be found at the sculpture park.https://ysp.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/tony-wade-keepers-of-time

There will also be a limited edition lithographic print of one of the drawings for sale. (Veteran Pedunculate oak SE 28964 12677 – winter)

This is particularly significant for me as I was a student at Bretton Hall College between 1983 and 1986.

Bretton Hall was in the middle of the sculpture park site and I’ve grown up watching the park grow to become the UK’s leading international centre for modern and contemporary sculpture.

Keepers of Time – the drawing process

The tree drawings that I made for the earlier ‘Solitary Tree’ series (which documented the occurrence of single trees in agricultural fields) were done in pen and ink in sketchbooks.

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 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 lighter, I would erase the black marks to reveal the white of the ‘page’.   ^[1]

The process of drawing started on-site at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

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 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 6 to 8 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 took a further 2 hours. This was the most enjoyable part of the drawing process as I prefer to be outside.

I drew the trees in winter first. Without the foliage you really get to see their forms better; ancient and veteran trees have a fascinating lack of symmetry. These were done between February and April 2024.

I then sketched the same trees between May and September 2024. Tempting though it was to just add leaves to the winter drawings, this was not the case. The summer trees were sketched from the same position as the winter trees but there were many differences, including new growth and the lowering of branches due to the weight of the leaves. The trees really do take on a different shape over the growing season.

All in all it was quite a long process, but the trees took their time and so did I.

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^[1] For Keepers of Time, I did think about taking large pieces of paper out into the landscape. (When I came to my interview at Bretton Hall College back in 1983 I carried with me large rolls of paper, covered in drawings. I would have first seen many of the ancient and veteran trees as I slogged my way across what was then the deer park, with these rolls slung across my back.)