Rewilding areas do not usually conform to traditional notions of beauty in England’s green and pleasant land. Detractors may bewail the beaver-felled trees, untidy scrub, deadwood, weeds, mud and “mess”.

But a new exhibition highlights the aesthetic delights that can be discovered on rewilding sites where fungi grows on dying trees, water buffalo gather in new wetlands and brown-watered beaver pools flood once-desiccated fields.

The artist Rebecca Howard devoted two years to visiting rewilding projects across England before spending a month painting each of nine large canvases that reveal what happens when people step back from intensive management of land and allow wild nature to take a leading role.