If you have ever been to Orkney you will know it is a landscape dominated by grassland. With few trees here, it’s the shimmering of grass that marks the movement of wind and sun, and its growth and decay colours the changing seasons. Modern farming methods mean that...
One of the things I’ve been enjoying about working with other artists and writers is the discussions that open up around the work that my coaching clients are engaged with. Ideas I am interested in find new resonance in conversation with others. Old ones bloom back...
This week I’m delighted to speak with award-winning writer and journalist Cal Flyn about her recent book Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape. The book is infused with a tentative kind of hopefulness, full of vivid examples of the resilience...
What colour is water anyway? I can’t quite get it right in the studio. I can’t quite name it in writing either. The loch is black is dull grey is purple-brown is warm brown is black is mist is grey is white is clear is invisible. The sea is...
What is that creative itch that keeps wanting scratched? Why do we get fretful when life’s obligations keep pulling us away from the creative work we want to do? Why is it we expend so much of our time and energy on activities, sometimes quite demanding, that...
…A musical composition does the same for listening. Art is a summoning of attention. To create it requires the highest directed focus, as does experiencing it. So writes Sven Birkerts in his essay ‘Attending the dragonfly’, one of the essays...
