2022
I have been commissioned to write a book on foraging for and making natural paints which will be published by Search Press June 2023. The book is written and is being edited and all the photos were shot this summer, it’s an exciting time.
I will be teaching courses in Europe, USA and UK over the coming year. I am planning a series of classes and courses in USA and Canada with Theresa Emmerich Kamper in spring 2023. More here soon, and on our Instagrams.
My immersive wild art materials course ‘Found and Ground Art Materials’ debuted at Schumacher College in September and will return in 2023. You will be able to learn many of the materials and techniques I use to make my paints, inks and tools.
You can find my oak gall ink drawings on parchment and buckskin in the Dark Mountain book Fabula.
My art, including drawings and objects, approach, materials and commissions are here, as is an in-depth blog about my published work and work in progress. I hope you enjoy it. Do get in touch via the contact page or find me on Instagram @foundandground.
2021:
First Friday with Art.Earth, I was in conversation on 2nd April, Good Friday, with Dark Mountain’s Charlotte DuCann and poet Dom Bury about Borrowed Time. We spoke about the small matters of life, death and art.
Wild Twins course ran again in November 2021 as an online expedition, with a mixture of live & recorded classes, solo and paired assignments, as well as a parcel of wild materials sent out before the course started. The first course ran from 24th April until 15 May and filled up in a month. The next course ran from 13th November – 4th December 2021. It was full. Wild Twins has now ended, and Paul and I look forward to working together in future.
January 2021: Perhaps you have just found my work in the Current Dark Mountain book Fabula. There, I created drawings on parchment and buckskin with oak gall ink, all made here by the River Thames. These images were sent to writer Paul Kingsnorth and he responded with the short story ‘The Light in the Trees’ which you can find in the book. As with our course Wild Twins, here the usual modern order of images following or illustrating thoughts in words has been reversed.
I currently have work in the timely book ‘Fire Season‘, which explores the wildfires, deforestation and destruction wrought by humans in the Anthropocene.
A residency making inks from seaweed in Mull, Scotland, at Knockvologan Studies was a great way to re-enter the world after lockdown ended.
2020
June 2020: This summer saw my work in room 4 of the online exhibition Wilderness of the Mind and a recent edition of Earth Island Journal.
I had three new works exhibiting online with the Wilderness Art Collective as our summer group show has had to move online due to Covid.
May 2020: A new photographic piece featuring an ongoing collaboration with Mark Raudva is featured in Dark Mountain Issue 17. Showing a visibly mended jacket which I have been repairing and renewing for over 15 years.
March 2020: Wild Ink workshops in Western Sweden in March 2020 were a great success, and I plan to be teaching natural materials there again in the autumn. The first of a series of workshops at my new studio has begun. Last November 8 folks booked for oak gall ink making, plus quills and brushes. Followed by painting on buckskin in January, making natural watercolours from scratch in February, and grinding pigments from scratch to make paint. All the details are on the workshops page, you will be most welcome to attend in future, and all necessary hygiene and social distancing rules will be followed.
2019
July 2019: My work features in The Clearing, an online magazine from Little Toller. My latest article for Dark Mountain is here. My work features in the Autumn 2019 issue of Earth Island Journal, and I am now part of Wild Pigments Project online. Watch this space.
May 2019: I co-taught Wild Twins again in May 2019 with Paul Kingsnorth, a week for rewilding your art and / or your writing on Sherkin island on the wild Atlantic coast of Ireland. Our May 2018 course was a grand event with much sunshine as well as a stormy night, wonderful walks, ancient ochres and songs around the fire. We made making everything we need from scratch – inks, books, paints, pens, and responding to each other, to nature and to ancient stories.
2018
October 2018: I taught regular life drawing sessions at Canela Café in Hampton Court, each last Tuesday evening of the month for a year.
May 2018: I created the painting for cover for Dark Mountain 13 which was published in May 2018. Have a look here for a short essay and great pictures of the great rocks on which I worked. New commissioned work appears in Dark Mountain 16, the tenth anniversary issue, this October.
July 2018: 10 of my small works made in natural pigments on deerskin parchment illustrate Dark Mountain 12 – Sanctum. For the cover of issue 13, I used ochres hand-dug and refined into raw pigments from Clearwell Caves, as well as Italian red ochre, Oxfordshire’s hangman’s ochre, and English charcoal.