Interview: Artist Marilyn Trew’s unique maps can be seen in beauty spots throughout the Swindon area

By Barrie Hudson barrie@positive-media.co.uk

Marilyn Trew loves art and loves creating maps.

The results of that happy combination of loves are displayed in public places and private homes throughout the Swindon area and beyond.

She maps not just places but their history, their wildlife and the people - sometimes generations of peoplewhose stories are intertwined with that of the landscape.

Her work can be seen at Wichelstowe, at Shaftesbury Lake, at Jubilee Lake, at TWIGS Community Gardens and many other locations.

There are also private commissions, ranging from watercolours of beloved family homes to maps not just of places but of lives.

“I do things for 60th wedding anniversaries, anniversaries or birthdays.

“I did a map recently for a headmaster. It was commissioned by his wife and it was the story of his life.

“It contained every house he lived in, every school he was a teacher or a headmaster at, their holidays all over the world, the phonebox where she made a phone call to make the first date - so I’m almost like a stalker into their lives, basically!”

Originally from Wimbledon, Marilyn worked for many years as an HR manager for Lucent Technologies in Malmesbury, a high-powered role involving recruiting specialist engineers. She volunteered as a

Samaritan and later spent many years as a professional counsellor and eventually a teacher of counselling.

Her love of art, like her love of maps, began in childhood.

Marilyn traces her fascination witn maps back to family holidays in the 1950s aboard the Lanchester car shared with an uncle and five cousins. Her father would challenge her to keep track of the journeys.

“Every 10 miles I had to say what the temperature of the car was, where we were on the map and approximate time to our next destination.

“I could tell on an Ordnance Survey Map the difference between a church with a spire and no spire.

“I could tell what was a marshland or a bridge.

“So I got very heavily into maps and curiosity for travel, really. That’s manifested itself now in the maps.”

And art?

“I did go to art school. I passed the 13-plus in Art so I went to art school from when I was 13 to when I was 17.

“Then I started my life and art didn’t really play a part, apart from the odd poster for the scouts or stuff for the children.

“It wasn’t until I retired that I thought about art and then became an artist - with proper pictures, as it were!

“I painted pictures - I belonged to the artists’ forum in the Brunel Centre in Swindon. I ran three art groups with about 70 people each week for a number of years, maybe four or five, until covid struck, and then that stopped that!

“The maps started about eight years ago.

“I went to Peatmoor Woodland, just for a walk on my own - get a bit of solitude and birdsong - and I got lost in there. I couldn’t find my way out for quite a while.

“Then, when I came out of it, I saw these lovely signposts ready for a map or a sign.

“There was nothing on the posts but they had lovely tiled roofs, just waiting for noticeboards.”

Marilyn called Roger Ogle, who she had got to know while living in West Swindon.

Roger, in addition to a career which includes being founder editor of Swindon Link, has looked after the woodland for many years.

“I said, ‘I think you need a map, Roger.’ That was the very first one that I did, and I’ll be forever grateful to Roger for letting me do that.

“He’s looked after the woodland for 30 years. There are many, many places like that in Swindon, where people have looked after them for 30 years, many small places.

“I’m currently mapping West Swindon for the green spaces, however small they are.

“I hope that the maps increases people’s curiosity about places.”

Further information about Marilyn and her work can be found on Facebook at Marilyn Trew-Artist and Marilyn’s Maps.

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