Artist-in-Residence, Railway Land Wildlife Trust, Lewes, East Sussex UK / 2023-2025

As an artist, I often find myself at the threshold - between the seen and the unseen, the heard and the unspoken. It is in this liminal space that I listen. To the subtle shifts in the land, the quiet gestures of water and wind, the lingering echoes of human and non-human histories. Listening is a way to attune to place, to receive what is not immediately obvious, and to respond through visual art. In this way, I approach my practice not as an interpreter, but as a participant in an ongoing, unfolding conversation with the more-than-human world.

As artist-in-residence at the Lewes Railway Land, I draw inspiration from my direct, felt experience of this unique nature reserve. My practice engages deeply with the site’s geography, ecology, and social history, while also responding to the emotional and sensory qualities of the landscape.

Paying close attention to our surroundings enables a more meaningful connection with the world and fosters a greater clarity and richness in artistic expression. The longer I spend observing and being present in this environment, the more I discover new ways to explore and respond to the seasonal rhythms of nature and the emotions they stir within us.

In a broader sense, I am guided by the poet Mary Oliver’s words: “Attention is the beginning of devotion.” This has proven true in my own experience. Immersing myself in the natural world here leaves me feeling calmer, more energized, and mentally uplifted. In turn, this sense of well-being deepens a caring, attentive, and reciprocal relationship with the land, something I’ve come to think of as the “Happiness Effect.”

Attention as Devotion

A series of mixed media collages on paper, the small size and scale of which are expressive of the importance and value of noticing with intent.

Watercolour with its fluid transparency and delicate unpredictability holds a unique power to express the poetic atmosphere of the shifting states which define wetland spaces such as Lewes Railway Land, East Sussex.

This medium echoes the blurred boundaries and ephemeral mood where water meets land and air can hover thick with moisture. Washes bleed into each other like mist over reeds, capturing the quiet transitions between solid and liquid, presence and absence.

Water unseats the science of strata 2022

A trip to Venice in May 2022 provided the inspiration for previous watery artworks which speak of impermanence. The use of reflective aluminium as substrate which is sometimes visible through the paint recalls the rise and fall of water levels and the consequent submerging and reclamation of land over time. In these works, water takes on inexorable power. A natural force that cannot be held back, water seeps in, to muddy borderlines and flood territories until all humanity’s pretensions of control are eventually worn away. Water is also materially impermanent. Shifting from rain to stream to river to ice to rain again, it represents something eternally shifting from one state to another. The work catches this shapeshifter in all its flux and flow.

These works are made with water-based mixed media on aluminium.

Home Ground 2022 A series of paintings embodying the energetic tangle of toughness with delicacy in burgeoning nature

Water-based paint, ink, charcoal and water-soluble crayon on paper, framed in black wood with non-reflective glass. 53cm x 53cm.

Searchers 2022

Drawn to the songs and patterns of birds flying overhead, sensing in their restlessness and journeying an intimation of migration linked to my family heritage. In these works, the motif of nests comes up against the flight paths of birds in paintings poised between the twin axes of migration and homecoming.

Water-based paint, water-soluble crayon on thick paper, float mounted under glass in white obeche wood frame. 53cm x 53 cm framed.

Vocal Tracks: how to inhabit the air

From a series of waterbased paintings on canvas, inspired by aerial routes and the patterns of birdsong ever present on daily walks through the South Downs National Park.

hyper, space is a video filmed at Lewes Railway Land and Brighton beach, which was shortlisted for the Wells Art Contemporary awards in 2020.

Distancing

At that time we were in lockdown, socially distanced. The following large collage and mixed media works on linen canvas express the almost echoing numbness of isolation.

Of pulse and pattern

Our changing view, according to where we stand, allows at once the tactility of presence and the intangibility of distance. In between, the land rises and falls in a cadence changed over time through weathering and a myriad crisscrossing tracks and trails, through which we are connected with all who have moved over the same ground.