Blog
Stem Dwellings
Or home for twigs, buds, blooms, posies, stalks – they also look rather well holding a feather or two. The trees are bursting with catkins and buds at the moment and tiny, delicate petals are emerging through the soil – I love to bring indoors some of these first signs of spring. I’ve carved […]
Pure Heart
A straightforward stone, shaped by wind and weather, tides and time. Nature smoothed and touched by pink, by me. Handled. Held.
Elementum
It was an unexpected find – I’d followed a link from a beautiful Barn Owl illustration by Rebecca Clark and found myself introduced to Elementum. The name intrigued, Elementum – A journal of nature & story. At the time I was much too interested in Rebecca’s beautiful work, but later went back to look […]
As light as a feather
Sometimes when I’m unsure about how a carving will look, or indeed whether I can achieve the result I would like, I have little practice runs. In this case I’ve had a trial run carving a feather – I wanted it to look light, and floating – not a quill sort of feather, but […]
Nature’s favourite shape
Is the hexagon nature’s favourite shape? I keep seeing it, and the more I look, the more the six sides jump out at me. It is quite a satisfying, solid shape – a stable shape. The Giant’s Causeway, honeycomb, tortoise or turtle shell, snowflake, flower shapes, poppy seeds – there are lots more examples. […]
The Story of Star Carr
Last night I joined the Appleton History Group for one of their evening talks given by Professor Nicky Milner from York University. Star Carr: An early Mesolithic site at Seamer, near Scarborough Star Carr is a Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) archaeological site, dating to around 9000 BC, just centuries after the end of the […]
Red Bird
These little treasures of red pebbles and my other thoughts on red stone recently, have inspired me to carve a piece of red sandstone that I had in the workshop. It was a slim slither of quite course grained stone, with areas of differing textures and it somehow became a bird – Red Bird. […]
Big Garden Birdwatch 2017
The sun came out for my birdwatch, after days of cold grey. The bird sound is spring-like. Spotting and recording the birds is the easy bit – I hope to sketch them as I see them during my count, which I find is quite a challenge. Particularly the Nuthatch as it sneaks off behind […]
Not a befuddled fog
A beautiful stone sits solid and quiet in a thick cloud of tiny water droplets.
RyeScape
Ryedale is my dale. Ryedale being the area in North Yorkshire where I live and work. I’m so fortunate in this, as Ryedale District Council are doing lots of exciting things for their artists and we have a remarkable Creative Economy Officer, Yvette Turnbull whose enthusiasm for and nurturing of creatives is infectious […]