This painting features a ruined church on the site of a medieval village called Cottam now long since abandoned. When I painted this I was puzzled about the church. Why, when and whom had it been built for? I presumed at the time that it was Victorian but have now found out its true history. It was in fact erected in the 1940s for RAF personnel serving in the nearby airfield. When the station was closed and the other buildings demolished it was left to the vagaries of Mother Nature and now forms the enigmatic focus for my painting. This is a beautiful area - the Yorkshire Wolds. It really is 'beautiful' with its rolling Wolds and big skies - a magnet for painters including the world famous David Hockney who used it as the centrepiece of several years work culminating in a wonderful (and unique) one man exhibition at the Royal Academy - "The Bigger Picture". Who then would like to see this marvellous countryside devastated and despoiled? Look no further than our new Prime Minister and her government who have expressed their determination to push ahead with plans for the whole area to be used for high volume hydraulic fracturing or 'fracking' to you and me. I live a few miles from this idyllic scene in the small village of Kilham but this is not a NIMBY issue because vast swathes of Yorkshire, Lancashire and parts of Derbyshire are under threat. However we have had two meetings in the village hall to see what we can do to prevent the devastation and damage that fracking inevitably leads to. Response has been good and we are proud to be part of the growing resistance movement against this reckless process. But we need your help because no area is safe! Please, please get yourself informed and add your voice to the opposition against fracking in out beautiful country. There are lots of websites to explore to find out the facts for yourself but this is a good starting point: www.isfrackingsafe.com
Mark Mills is a successful businessman from Lancashire. I would like to leave you with a quote from an open letter he published after the one day's test fracking in his area which caused two earthquakes. The earthquakes damaged the drill and it is irrecoverable so presumably the integrity of the well has been breached and the area is already sitting on the time bomb of an environmental disaster. All that after only one test drill. Here's the part of his letter which I think neatly sums up the whole sorry matter:
" In years to come, does any sane person truly believe that injecting millions of gallons of chemicals into the earth beneath us, puncturing our protective rock and exposing water we drink to the chemicals, whilst drawing trillions of cubic metres of gas from the same area and then transporting radioactive waste in huge quantities daily for years to come will not, at some time in the future, cause some form of disaster, illness, panic, earthquake or unforeseeable adverse event?" Mark Mills
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