Landscape artist Gordon Rushmer returns to his roots for his latest exhibition at Haslemere Educational Museum next month.

Raised in the western Weald at Petersfield, Gordon remembers many bicycle rides with his parents, heading east to explore the countryside all the way to Hastings.

These experiences and more recent cycle rides and distance walks from his home at Plaistow in West Sussex were to lay the foundations for ’Between the Downs’.

The exhibition took two years to complete and is a snapshot of past and present life in the Weald, the huge tract of country between the North and South Downs.

“With every walk or cycle ride I became more aware of the industries long since abandoned, historic churches with rare wall paintings, rural crafts, some still practised today, intriguing characters and landscapes to paint for posterity,” said Gordon.

“Inevitably, poets, writers and artists have been drawn to this part of the world and I have been able to explore and experience firsthand the views and vistas that influenced the work of such greats as Hilaire Belloc, Eric Ravilious, Rudyard Kipling and Stanley Badmin.”

Gordon still explores the Weald by bike or on foot in search of further material to unlock the many secrets revealed only to those who take time and look beyond the obvious.

“Perhaps it’s down to nostalgia, a longing for the days of my childhood when Sunday was a cycling day, whatever the weather,” he added.

“We headed out with oilskin capes, cucumber sandwiches and the “Barts” half inch map. My mother and father seemed to know every lane with grass growing up the middle, every café for high tea and every pub for pints of shandy in the late evening.

“Or maybe it’s a reaction to my years as a war artist that I now find the relative peace to be found in the countryside both inspiring and timeless.”

In the course of his travels, Gordon uncovered many local stories that he illustrated through his work and the words and paintings have been brought together in a book ’Window on the Weald’ that accompanies ’Between the Downs’.

As a further celebration of the Weald, Opus Anglicanum have created a special concert to support the exhibition.

Renowned for their ’Figgy Pudding’ concerts in Haslemere, the five male singers and their reader Zeb Soanes will perform songs by Peter Warlock, Ivor Gurney, Vaughan Williams and Edward Elgar in the context of Hilaire Belloc’s 1911 ’The Four Men’, a walk across the Weald of Sussex with poetic, reflective and humorous material and featuring songs by Belloc himself.

Tickets for the concert, priced £15, on Saturday, October 10, are available from Haslemere Educational Museum, 78 High Street Haslemere.

The exhibition opens on Saturday, October 3 and runs from Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm, closing on Saturday,October 24 (closed on Sundays and Mondays).