John Timberlake first visited Berwick as a child in the 1970s, and both the town, its coastal location and the River Tweed made a lasting impression upon him.

He returned in 2024, shortly after the death of his father and began a series of initial drawings, colour studies and reference photographs to inform the paintings in this exhibition. On two further visits he met and undertook site visits with Northumberland-based geologists and archaeologists.

Timberlake was inspired by the momentary shifts of light and weather that are typical of the Tweed estuary and the coastal location of Berwick, alongside the geological shifts of deep time evident in the local topography. The resulting works reflect on landscape as a construction of space and time.

John Timberlake was born in Lancashire in 1967. He studied Fine Art at Brighton Polytechnic, the Whitney Museum of American Art Studio Program, New York, and Goldsmiths, London. Timberlake works principally with painting, photography and drawing, focusing on conceptions of landscape as a construct of time as well as space and location.

His work is held in a number of public and private collections in Britain, Europe and the US, including the Imperial War Museum, London, the Barts and Royal London Hospital NHS Trust, and the West Collection, Oaks, Pennsylvania.