In an astonishing collection of twenty-eight notebookscreated over a quarter of a century, Philip Hughes hassought to capture the spirit of a place: its geologicalstructure, its relationship with the surrounding landscape,and its occasional signs of human intervention.These painterly but topographically precisenotebooks record moments when the artist has beenmoved to draw what he can see, whether from the shelterof a standing stone in Orkney, Scotland, from the air overthe Simpson desert in Australia, or from a postal boatsailing through the Norwegian fjords.Pieced together by Hughes himself from overa thousand drawings, this is a logbook of momentaryobservations. Some are swift sketches of fields orhorizons, others are slower studies of lichen and flowersin Antarctica, or lines of quartz in granite in Cornwall.The depth of feeling and knowledge Hughes has fordifferent terrains and climates underpins the beautyof this essential and inspiring selection of notebooks.