Creating a forest narrative

An artist's journey

May has arrived and with it comes the flowers that we have all been waiting for. April was quite warm and sunny on the island so everything stormed ahead and the garden, meadow and woodland are looking fabulous. This is my favourite time of the year for the woodland floor as it is a mix of flowering wild garlic and bluebells.

For my virtual open studio in September I taking the woodland as my theme so I am busy taking photos to take back to my studio. There I can extract some of the ideas and create new work. On the way to new work I plug in an art journal page. I rarely make a creative move without creating an art journal page that I can refer to as ideas begin to form.

Once this is in place I can move forward with a bit more confidence. Next up was printing using handmade stencils using my Cricut machine. I use a gel press with my stencils and the beginning of some ideas are forming.

For me, art is a step by step process with lots of notes taken along the way. These notes help me make sense of my ideas and stop me becoming overwhelmed. It is very easy to lose focus when I am in the studio. I have worked as a commercial artist for over 20 years and every day is a school day. I want my virtual open studio to be a way of sharing my own personal relationship with the forests that I walk on an almost daily basis.

Often I am quite devoid of human company and it is this separation from humankind that I want to ‘bottle’ in my new collection. It is how the forests make me feel and how deeply the experience of being there touches me. From about now on the island the beaches get busier and busier so I avoid them and take off to walk the forest trails. Rarely do I see another human soul but I am encapsulated within nature’s presence. When I look back into my childhood some of my favourite memories were when we were out as a family walking the dog in the forest. I would linger allowing for a gap to open up between me and my family so that I could walk alone.

When my own children were young we spent many hours on forest trails and I used to make up stories about fairy houses and goblins. In my own head I still believe my own stories. Forests are magical places where the unknown can happen on a moment by moment basis and who are we to doubt that? Round every corner is evidence of wildlife passing through just moments before us…..

In my garden I came across this trampled spot that can only have been made by a deer lying down. How fabulous is that? While we are sleeping the deer are taking some time out. On a recent trip to Oban with my daughter -

Molly Ella

- a deer dropped out of the forest next to a road on the edge of the town. It wasn’t bothered about us at all. It is just these sorts of encounters that remind us that we are not a dominant species. We are, in fact, sharing the world with all that nature can offer us. It is humbling.

So I want to capture all of this and just how it plays out in the forest. I want to interrogate why it is in forests that I feel so completely connected with the natural world. I want my art to share that message with the world around me. I teach a lot on zoom and I am thinking I might run a wee seminar as part of open studio where we can all interrogate our relationship with forests and woodlands that we visit through a series of small creative excercises. I would be fascinated to see how others interpret these natural spaces and the place these interpretations have in their creative souls. As plans develop I will keep you in the loop but if you think you might like to join me for this seminar do let me know so I can gauge interest. Thank you.

Meantime, I am back to my studio to continue my own personal journey. I will leave you with a photo of one of my favourite places to sit in the whole world. You will often find me there……and my best friend is waiting for me.