The ancient art of walking

Senior features writer

Sunday 10 June 2012

As one of the founders of global IT giant Logica in the late 1960s, engineer Philip Hughes had a hand in developing London Underground's automated ticketing system and some of the earliest word processors.

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A trailblazer in business and painting Philip Hughes talks to Barry Didcock about his unusual method

But in a parallel career, Hughes has indulged two other interests which couldn't be more removed from the world of circuit boards and computer chips: walking and painting. A selection of his bold, expressive landscapes, as well as examples of his notebooks and drawings, are being published in book form as Tracks: Walking The Ancient Landscapes Of Britain (Thames & Hudson, £24.95).

Now 76, Hughes still paints in his studio as he has always done. But he works from exact, draughtsman-like sketches made during his many long walks, some lasting up to three days."The process is very clear," he explains. "I do a walk, I draw during it – partly on notebooks, partly on other sheets of paper – then I work up from them. So everything comes from a drawing that I've done in the landscape. The only exception is that I'm interested in aerial views of tracks and aerial views in general, so there I have to work from photographs."The walks themselves are planned with military precision, in part because Hughes always travels alone and couldn't bear the ignominy of being hauled off a hillside by a mountain rescue team. But mostly because he views the act of walking as an important part of the art he creates. It's not an original idea. It has been current in art since the 1970s and it's one he shares with so-called "land artists" such as Hamish Fulton and 1989 Turner Prize winner Richard Long. "I didn't set out saying I was going to make work around walks," Hughes admits, "it's just that when I analysed what I had done, that's what I had been doing."But where Long and Fulton are obsessed with "wilderness areas" such as the Cairngorms and the powers of human endurance required to cross them, Hughes's eye is more often drawn to landscapes with a trace of human settlement. Stonehenge is a particular favourite, as is the puzzling prehistoric chalk mound at Silbury Hill in Wiltshire. The Andean region of South America, with its Mayan and Incan remains, is another regular venue. In 2002, meanwhile, Hughes spent two months in the Antarctic as artist-in-residence with the British Antarctic Survey, travelling towards the South Pole and camping on the high plateaus. An exhibition of that polar work has just opened in Australia and he has recently returned from central Australia where he has been making work based on the marks left by animals crossing the salt plains.Predictably, Hughes has also made many trips to Scotland, drawn by the spectacular scenery, the quality of the light and the wealth of neolithic remains. Included in Tracks are paintings and drawings made in the Western Isles and in Orkney, where the Ring Of Brodgar holds a particular fascination. "My favourite area of all in Scotland is Assynt and those extraordinary mountains around Suilven, Canisp, Cul Mor, and that whole area north of Ullapool," he says. "So Assynt is my favourite wilderness walk. But my favourite atmospheric place is that inter-connection between Maeshowe, Stenness and Brodgar – that very small bit of landscape with the lochs either side which has grown on me more and more."More recently, Hughes's interest in aerial views has led him to start incorporating maps into his work. "I'm a mapaholic," he laughs. "The first thing I do when I'm planning a walk is to buy a map. But to me a map is a beautiful thing in its own right."Those cartographers of old were often painters as well, so there was an inter-relationship. Of course they were painting for factual purposes because they couldn't take a photo. But right at that point they were mixing factual surveying with artistic representation." Philip Hughes has spent four decades passing through landscapes from the South Pole to the Andes and making art out of the process. He walks, he draws, he walks some more. But in this digital age, he says, there's no reason anybody who wants to can't construct a similar artistic response to the experience of being outdoors – using photographs shot on an iPhone then downloaded to a computer, for instance."You could construct from a walk a series of photos, some of which are atmospheric, some of which are tiny details, some of which are panoramas, some of which are the same thing taken over two or three hours to see how the light changes. There are all sorts of ways in which people can be creative."It's an idea he hopes to impart and expand on next month when he undertakes a lecture tour of Scotland which will touch down in Cromarty, Stromness, Aberfeldy and Stirling. "By walking, people are part of a creative process," he says finally. "By doing it, by observing it, planning it, they themselves are almost creating their own work of art."It's certainly something to think about next time you lace up your hiking boots.Tracks: Walking The Ancient Landscapes Of Britain is published by Thames & Hudson (£24.95). Details of the illustrated talks and lectures available at www.philiphughesart.com

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The ancient art of walking

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