Hillside with Trees and Ruined Tower, Right 

Curator: We’re looking at Alexander Cozens’ “Hillside with Trees and Ruined Tower, Right,” held at the Tate. It’s a small, evocative landscape drawing. Editor: Immediately, there's a sense of faded grandeur—those trees, that tower, they feel like echoes. But what's striking is the raw paper itself, almost like a textile. Curator: Exactly, Cozens wasn’t after precise representation. Think of his blotting technique, it’s all about accident and suggestion. He'd use diluted ink and blotting to create abstract shapes, and then develop those into landscape elements. Editor: The paper’s texture then isn't just a support, it's complicit in the image! Look closely—the drawing is modest, the paper stock affordable. How do we consider his practice through this lens of production? Curator: It speaks to his philosophy. He thought art should spark the imagination, not dictate it. The roughness invites our participation, like a half-remembered dream. Editor: So, this isn’t just a landscape, it's an invitation, a starting point constructed in very deliberate material conditions. Curator: Precisely! It's a little window onto how we perceive and create our own worlds. Editor: Makes you wonder what other secrets are embedded in the very fibers.