woven in light moulded in earth

First, a confession

I’ve done harm to my body and other people’s bodies. Professionally, personally and socially.

I’ve been the critic behind the lens - tweaking, cinching, manipulating bodies to sell an impossible dream. I have been the subject in front of the lens - shamed, objectified, controlled, vilified.

And I have been my own personal Judas - denying myself, my desires, my dreams, my needs to play at being obedient: to keep me safe, but at the cost of my vitality.

A 12-18 month CREATIVE journey of reclamation

And so, this body of work is a little bit of atonement. I want to get beyond the skin and labels I’ve lived within for the first half of my life.

To create from what it is to be fully embodied, reclaiming my own natural processes and instincts within a landscape trying to do the same.

To find out what mythic stories find new expressions as images and words emerge from dissolving the boundaries between the human body and the “second body” (the world external to our human form), and enjoy the full visceral experience of being star stuff temporarily entangled together in this moment.

From domesticity to rewilding: A trail run as a descent

I run to explore and create, not to race.

The trail from my house in a North Yorkshire mill village over the hill to Broughton Sanctuary draws me deep into a terrain that speaks of how land use is changing, how much control and separation from natural processes and connections is subject to perspective and personal history.

Passing through the industrial revolution, intensive sheep grazing, game shooting fields, moorland, tree plantations, scrubland, forgotten orchards, nature recovery projects and an ancestral estate, this trail reflects passages and trials in my life.

Every time I run it I feel something shift in the dark earth buried in me for the better. Every time something catches my eye and I spend hours lost in contemplation and sketching, I return to my house renewed - a stronger sense of belonging to myself.

And this is where I ground my work. What will emerge, I can’t be sure. But like Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of Sex and War, I know I’ll be completely different on the other side when I return to the light.

Reclamation isn’t about going back to something that never existed, it’s about using the past to empower us through a future we cannot — and perhaps should not — fully control.