If you’ve read my book The Clearing you’ll know I’m a big fan of the artist Agnes Martin. I’ve been thinking about her work and life a lot recently. When the world is falling to bits and it feels ridiculous to spend my time drawing pictures I remind myself of what...
This weekend I played host in my studio to a group from the Friends of the RSA who were visiting Orkney for a week. Quite apart from the well-timed need for a spot of tidying up, it was a pleasure to open my space to such an interested, curious, engaged group of...
So I got COVID, finally. Or COVID got me. It fairly knocked me out, so last week I had a few days of not being able to do as much as usual, and my brain was fogged and sluggish. I found myself gazing out of the window a lot. So I’m returning to a pet subject of mine...
Several of my creative coaching clients are working on a writing project that’s drawn from their own life experiences. And, as I was when I was writing my book The Clearing, at a certain point they are somewhat taken aback to realise that they are writing….a memoir....
Laura Drever is an Orcadian painter whose work grows out of her deep love of Orkney’s undulating landscapes and shifting light. Her paintings are steeped in engagement with this place and the experience of walking these particular landscapes. “Teebro” is the title of...
I have just treated myself to a new copy of a book that has done more, perhaps, to shape my thinking than any other. Recommended to me many years ago by the poet Em Strang, I already have a bashed-up ex-library copy of Canadian poet Tim Lilburn’s slender essay...
