A Walk To Het Steen

This project was simple but ambitious. The starting point was a Rubens landscape, familiar to pupils involved in the National Gallery’s Take One Picture scheme focusing on this painting.

The challenge was to bring An Autumn Landscape with a View of Het Steen in the Early Morning to life in a collective artwork reflecting its atmosphere, and owned by all contributors.

The result was a walk-through, corrugated cardboard spiral maze with hundreds of individual monochromatic marks.

Horsley church was large enough to accommodate 100 primary school pupils, a GCSE class, Stroud FE College students, parents, governors, staff, friends and villagers.

Imogen provided an overall plan and structure, organising the participants into age groups, with the youngest drawing insects, blades of grass and foliage, the oldest providing two and four-legged animal and human interest.

After two days of intensive, exciting co-operative drawing, the school now boasts a lightweight travelling exhibition, which can be endlessly re-arranged to reveal new details.