Natura

Ongoing archive of hikes and solitary landscapes.

This new project grows out of memories of travelling through rural places - most vividly a hike I once took in the Pyrenees, but also moments from the Canary Islands and other pockets of nature I’ve wandered through. Those times feel impossibly distant from my life in London now, yet when I draw or paint from memory, old sketches, or photographs, they return clearly: the excitement of the new, the quiet astonishment, and the pain woven through those trips and what unfolded after them. Bliss never seems to exist without a thread of fear.

I’m working with the colours and shapes that stayed with me: the quick sketches I made at mountain refuges, the few minutes I stole to draw on the trail or arrival at a beach, the photos I took before moving on. Being in nature - completely alone, feeling like the only person in the world - was overwhelming in every direction: peace and total anxiety at the same time. Sitting 2,500 metres up on a rock with nothing but my backpack and sketchbook is still the moment I think of when I imagine being alive. Daily life brings its own kind of aliveness, of course - but nothing quite like that.

And for the record, I’m not someone who enjoys the hike itself. I’d teleport to the summit if I could. But I’m fully prepared to cry the whole way up if that’s what it takes to feel what’s waiting at the top.

I’ll share experiments and works as they emerge, and this will remain an ongoing project.