Nature - Page 2 of 6 - a-n The Artists Information Company

I walk a familiar path to the local shops and railway station. For many years I have made this journey to and fro, passing by houses and flats where occupants move out and new ones move in; excited to explore […]

The tin-can clink of blackbirds’ calls punctuate the quiet of dusk. Plumes of crows boiled up into the sky this afternoon, sharp, black, paper-cut silhouettes, scattered over a blinding white sky. Everything looks drained of colour, bleached out, as if […]

We kicked off the study period with a session looking into nature, paying attention to non-human relationships that could inspire new ways of thinking. The session involved: memory and location mapping exercise: connecting the body, memories, places and imagination, a […]

Outside the days are short, dark and the earth is wet. Large Oak leaves are falling around my studio, and providing an incubation for rebirth. I am finishing a project I started on my Forest School practitioner course, four years […]

It’s funny how being faced with an interview or CV update makes you look at yourself and the ‘story’ of your life objectively. A friend of mine insisted that I am eligible for an application I wouldn’t have believed myself […]

When we view things it is never a flat scene in front of us. We take for granted the layers of structures, nature and people, interweaving one behind the other, a constant change of positioning and shifting going on all […]

The reeds and ex-thatching stock that neatly hem the fresh water of Slapton Ley are reverberating with late summer cricket calls. They’re incredibly loud; driving 60mph through the lanes of an evening after work, blaring ‘Autumn’ by Joanna Newsom, they’re […]

Sometimes when fragments are drawn together, a kind of transformation takes place. The simple placement of things side by side and interweaved with each other creates a dynamic and centrifugal energy and out of this new possibilities can arise. Nature […]

“Silicon is the eighth most common element in the universe by mass, but very rarely occurs as the pure element in the Earth’s crust. It is most widely distributed in dusts, sands, planetoids, and planets as various forms of silicon […]

Another day, another 2 drawings. I am somewhat demoralised. But the bamboo is drawing beautifully

“It’s life Jim – but not as we know it!” may be a famous mis-quote from the TV series Star Trek in an episode[1] of the sci-fi drama which explored the existence of a previously unknown life form. The story […]

It is very easy to read the bird and wind drawings as communication from another species. Today, when I went to change the paper at 8am for the daytime drawing, I found a nice picture of a tree, or maybe […]

I have 2 bird and wind drawing machines in prototype stage. Machine 1 is a plotter. It uses a series of pulleys and levers to plot X against Y depending on where a garden bird sits. Currently all birds are […]

To start with it seemed to me that in this complex world, my rock was literally a solid base on which I could anchor my thoughts – as Richard Dawkins says: “In the beginning was simplicity”; before anything else existed […]

“Animism is the belief that objects, places and creatures all possess a spirit or soul. Believers in animism potentially perceive all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork and perhaps even words—as animated and alive.” It is said to […]

So I freely admit, I seemed to have become a bit fixated on my rock for all those years. I had clung to it through thick and thin, couldn’t seem to get it out of my mind. It had become […]

A very proper bumble bee, with a yellow stripe and a white bum, crawled under a log after a lot of dithering about. I had been trespassing and was now nearing the public right of way in order to rejoin […]

“Chemists have tried to imitate the chemical conditions of the young earth. They have put these simple substances in a flask (water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen) and supplied a source of energy such as ultraviolet light or electric sparks. After a few weeks […]

Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene[1]  describes how he thinks life began on earth: “In the beginning was simplicity… Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is satisfying because it shows us a way in which simplicity could change into […]

Cont’d from last time: “Sadly my frog is definitely, permanently dead.” But maybe my rock is not dead – it just appears to have no life. Some years ago I visited artist Andy Holden’s exhibition, Laws of Motion in a […]

A hazy blue stillness. Nothing moves. Until a sudden ripple disturbs the soupy water, stirs the suspended particles. Powerful legs propel the creature through the water and paddle madly as the alarmed frog attempts to secrete itself in a dark […]