A recent project for Mount Stuart House on the Isle of Bute.
Currently I'm in a fierce battle. Do I obsess over my new wonderful full time charity job, and draw fulfilment from that or do I just... draw?

Exploring the woods in West Dunbartonshire on the Clyde with Colin for my Project, Bird Call. A weekly bird count leading to artistic and practical projects in the woodlands.

Sorry I just want to quote Tove Jansson for a bit.

“Quite, quite,' she thought with a little sigh. 'It's always like this in their adventures. To save and be saved. I wish somebody would write a story sometime about the people who warm up the heroes afterward.”

“‎''Just think, never to be glad or disappointed. Never to like anyone and get cross at him and forgive him. Never to sleep or feel cold, never to make a mistake and have a stomach-ache and be cured from it, never to have a birthday party, drink beer, and have a bad conscience...
How terrible.”

“Why are you in such a rush?" Sophia asked, and her grandmother answered that it was a good idea to do things before you forgot that they had to be done.” 

“One has to discover everything for oneself. And get over it all alone.”

“Sometimes people never saw things clearly until it was too late and they no longer had the strength to start again. Or else they forgot their idea along the way and didn't even realize that they had forgotten” 

“you can't depend on people who just let things happen”

“Why do you smile all the time?" he said. "Because I am looking at you," she said”

“It is simply this: do not tire, never lose interest, never grow indifferent—lose your invaluable curiosity and you let yourself die. It's as simple as that.” 

A System That Still Kills Me

A little bit heavy, I was trying to learn more about colonial history after being brought to the realisation that we all grow up in a society based on it's systems of oppression and white privilege, and so, we are all on some level, battling a personal fight against bias, daily and constantly. I was reading Rudyard Kipling and also reading articles that linked the air strikes to slavery. Historically, the airstrike is very much a colonial invention. Stop rebellion by interfering with violence. Teach them to be scared. Young men who rebel because their place in life has been taken away. Obviously this is pretty complicated. Anyway this piece is about the airstrikes targeting innocents and how they are a representation of todays continuing colonial rule over non white people.

A driving force behind it was also the opportunity to exhibit in the Common Weal exhibition - Scotland's Political Awakening. Here's an article about the show that mentions me https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/3040/video-the-art-of-scotland-s-political-awakening-unveiled

The work is an original print in an edition of 20.

A month in Cambodia with a rubbish camera but many beautiful things. I miss the urgency of getting out there and seeing the land. And the warm temperature. And the new experiences.

Natural paint, creative mapping inspired by pychogeography, a map of The City of Glasgow superimposed on the world with routes and black marks that could have been on either. This was for UNFIX festival of performance and ecology at the CCA and part of my work for The Clipperton Project.

Northern Isles Expedition - The Clipperton Project

Scalloway, Fair Isle, Eday. Spirit of June with Sleepy Eagle.