Welcome

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LOCATION AND FOCUS OF MY WORK

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I’m an independent British artist-researcher-writer based at the edge of the Fens in rural Lincolnshire (where I grew up and have lived on and off for over 21 years).

My work is focused at the intersection of non-extractive practice and health (of all species), and I deliberately choose to work in areas not usually associated with contemporary art.

My work raises questions about materials and about who we make art for and with, and has moved me towards seeing art not as a commodity, but as a process of caring for all life.

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TRAINING AND CAREER (more info on CV page)

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My career path and education encompasses arts and creativity, psychosocial studies/psychotherapy, and geography, and is combined with many years of experience working in community environmental/sustainability organisations, mental health settings, and the arts.

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WHAT DOES MY PRACTICE LOOK LIKE?

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My place-based practice begins with walking and outdoor movement (connected to ecosomatics), and emerges from there, often including writing, gathering, ritual, photographic recording of actions, working with handmade plant and earth paints, and more recently installation.  I work intentionally with duration, cycles, and the many layers of the local, sharing non-extractive practices for health, wellbeing and sustainability through my visual work, participatory workshops, and presentations.

I was diagnosed with autism later in life, and draw on my lived experience to develop holistic processes which enhance health and wellbeing.

I describe my work as anti-spectacle, slow, quiet, and grounded in practices of witnessing and deep listening​. I incorporate research into ecological, spiritual, cultural, historical, and ancestral perspectives, questioning hierarchies and practices that have led to the multiple crises which we and the planet now face. This research process is led by my outdoor encounters.

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LIVING IN AOTEAROA (NEW ZEALAND) AND HOW IT CHALLENGED AND CHANGED MY APPROACH AND PHILOSOPHY

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For 18 years from 2004 to 2022 I lived in Aotearoa (New Zealand). Exposure to Te Ao Māori - the Māori worldview - through working in environmental conservation, through friendships, and through immersion has been central to the process of re-orientating my life and work to focus on path-finding through my native European indigenous traditions and processes​​.  I describe these processes as ancestral portals - ways of being in the world that were once essential for survival and balance - walking, working with plants as allies and medicine, reciprocity, relational practices of care, ritual, silence, listening with land, more-than-human kin, and natural cycles.  We hear a lot about this knowledge being lost, but I consider this to be an anthropocentric viewpoint that sees knowledge as existing only within the human.  Experience has taught me that knowledge is dispersed and diffracted; that our brains and bodies are not isolated discrete units, but part of a network of interconnected relationality. Knowledge is held not only within the individual human, but within the wider environment, land, and more-than-human others, all of whom invite listening, care, and collaboration, and can help us to reactivate exiled capacities.