Shape ~ Laurence Fuller: HighGate Woods ~ Cinematic Poetry

In this collection, Laurence captures the floating experience of Highgate Woods in North London. Its mysterious and spiritual qualities that hearken back to the ancient connection between humanity and nature. Like clouds touching the earth, the trees in his stills and cinematic poetry soar both into the heavens and the inner landscape of memory and reflection. This is no ordinary pastoral vision, but one imbued with a deep sense of time—time stilled beneath the canopy of green, where the natural world becomes an arbiter of inner transformation.

From a New Romantic perspective, that nature in art is not merely a representation but a communion with the larger forces that shape life itself. In “HighGate Woods,” Laurence deftly follows this tradition. His imagery speaks of loss, fleeting moments, and transcendence. The wet grass, the foxes, the flickering leaves, and the crosses on the trees become emblems of the sacred in the everyday, where even the most transient of sensations—like the itch of wet grass—becomes laden with meaning. He offers us confessions that dance between the mystical and the personal, evoking an archetypal journey where each step toward the gates of Gilgamesh is a step toward our own fate.

Through a series of stills, the collection captures the eerie beauty of nature at twilight—trees casting long shadows, leaves illuminated by fragments of light, foxes darting unseen between worlds, and the serene omnipresence of nature as an observer of human passion. The cinematic poetry piece, meanwhile, lifts us to a place where time is both circular and linear, where memories of ‘fish in the sky’ and ‘castles in the sand’ speak to both the fragility and the eternal renewal of the human spirit.

In Laurence’s work, we find that nature is more than mere backdrop. It is a participant in the drama of life, invoking the spirit of the satyrs that haunt these woods, bringing the viewer into a space of revelation, where echoes bounce from wells, and the quiet chirps of birds turn to symphonic crescendos. This collection calls us to feel the weightlessness of life in its fullest dimension, reminding us that the sunlight filtered through leaves is no less sacred than the myths we carry in our bones.

HighGate Woods by Laurence Fuller, is a collection of 10 1/1 Stills and a cinematic poetry 1/1 on NINFA x Shape. https://www.laurencefuller.art/highgate-woods