‘Cultivating dead trees’: the legacy of Paul Nash as an artist of trauma, wilderness and recovery’

Taking as its starting point the planting of a number of dead trees in the National Memorial Arboretum at Alrewas, Staffordshire, this article examines the iconic, pictorial and metaphorical value of trees - living, dying and dead - in garden and arboreta settings. Arguing that the image of inert nature strikes at the very principle of seasonal recovery and annual cycles of regeneration, the article explores the representation of danger, devastation and recuperation in the work of two contemporary British painters who each have a keen understanding of the totemic monumentality of trees, both within and outside garden and arboreta settings. Drawing upon political contexts in Northern Ireland and Iraq, and on environmental challenges along the east coast of England, both painters reference the work of the British painter Paul Nash. His understanding of decay and regeneration, and the cyclic depiction of death and life through nature, provides a connective tissue that links the major themes of remembrance, iconography and design that are at the heart of the National Memorial project at Alrewas.