I’m showing two photographic pieces of work at this exhibition at St Johns on Bethnal Green, London, from 6th to 11th June. Here’s a description of the exhibition from the curator Amy Cutler…

This free exhibition investigates the properties of forest memory through text, archive, and ‘xylarium’, or wood collection. Between the French horticultural term “forest trauma” and Robert Pogue Harrison’s “forests of nostalgia”, a whole discipline around history, witnessing, and the memorial qualities of woodland opens up. Art works examining the cultural expression of time and history in the forest are placed here alongside archival photographs, small press texts, artefacts, and museum objects, in an old, low-lit belfry designed by Sir John Soane.

It should be a very evocative and atmospheric exhibition, lit by candlelight in this Grade 1 listed belfry. For more information please see Amy’s blog – amycutler.wordpress.com

Its wonderful to have Spring here, to be surrounded by colour as I walk out of the village, springing up from what was cold, dry, brown earth only a few weeks back. The leaves and grass glow, the plants push up their flowers to meet the sun, and each drop of water is turned into a lushness of life.

A simple fold out book made from card offcuts, and used on a dog walk between my local villages. If the writing is a bit wobbly sometimes its because my dog was impatiently pulling at the lead at the same time…

Next Wednesday 17th April sees the Bristol launch (there will be others around the UK and overseas) of Stories of the Great Turning, published by Vala Publishing Co-operative.

As you’ll know from previous posts (see here) I have been involved in putting out a call-out to artists from around the world to submit artwork for inclusion alongside the written stories, and curating those submissions with Chris Seeley and Kathy Skerritt.

For information on the launch event, please see here, and RSVP via the link on that page.

Hope to see you there…

After a busy few weeks of facilitating projects I’ve set this week aside to be playful with my own artwork.

Yesterday I revisited walking baskets, something I used to make regularly, drawing from a particular place and what grows there to weave together a woven vessel. This time it was Chirton, the village to which I moved last August. Its not that wooded and the choice of raw materials for a basket is fairly limited. Its fascinating to me how through making you can come to know a place in different ways, this time through noticing which trees grow where, whether they are suitable for weaving, and how they are positioned in the landscape relative to my home and my usual walks. It’s a kind of mapping through making.

Today I wanted to prepare some surfaces for working in Savernake Forest. I miss the Forest now I don’t live so near and have been eager to get back in there. I decided to combine maps of the Forest with photographs that I have taken there before. I wanted to work on a larger scale for one piece, by joining four printed A4 images together (see before and after below), and onto a mask with a second piece, so that the work could become animated and experienced in alternative ways.

Both pieces were made by wandering and noticing, writing my thoughts and drawing my surroundings, making marks and adding colour with the different soils, stones and other materials to hand.

The end result is both the effect on me, and the artefact that is left at the end. When I wander and pay attention in this way, I become absorbed in the place, absorbed into it somehow, my mind clears and it seems to flow through me. This kind of artful mindfulness is something that I am continually returning to, art as a process of noticing, paying attention, developing newer, deeper, more personalised ways of knowing a place, and of knowing oneself.

Some images of art, walls, church pews and canal reflections from a weekend in the Brecon Beacons last month.

The painting, shadow installation and small sculptures (by Matt Caines, the one on the right now living with me), are all from ‘Where the Wonderful Happens’ the Winter show at The Art Shop Abergavenny. To see more of Matt Caines lovely work see – www.mattcaines.co.uk

A quickly drawn, rubbed and smudged walking drawing, made last weekend walking up through Gopher Wood and down the front of Huish Hill, in the Vale of Pewsey, Wiltshire.

I came across a couple of foxes this morning on my early morning walk, or rather they came across me as they cut across a field and slipped between hedges. These chance encounters are special and meaningful to me. The image is grainy and blurry and I like that – it is a moment in time captured, a gift of an experience.

The quality of the image also reminds me of Bear 71 an interactive film work on Grizzly Bears, more specifically the life on one particular bear and her attempts to survive alongside people, which I found very powerful.

I’m looking at stories and artwork where people turn to animals and vice versa, making simple collages from found images to explore the perceptual barrier which we use to set ourselves apart.

Any interesting examples of either please let me know with a comment below. Thank you.

I got out of the habit of drawing for pleasure a while back, it became all about drawing something as a way of designing it – planning an object or working through an idea.

I Loved making these quick sketches up on the downs above Oare, looking out over the Pewsey Vale, not worrying about what they looked like, just letting the fluid inky nib roll up and down and around the page, in response to the dark shapes of branches and footprints.