The studio is a shed.
Tucked away in the Highlands, it is a crowded, organised chaos of tools, materials, and works-in-progress that reflects the breadth and physicality of the practice that happens inside it. Handsaws, clamps, chisels, and power tools line the walls alongside paint, glazes, and canvases. A belt sander sits ready. Ceramic baby heads form a crowd or audience and interact with each other in spontaneous stories.
The work that emerges from here is organic. It grows. Wood is collected from fallen trees in nearby forests, carved by hand, sometimes charred black or patterned with grooves. Clay is pressed, coaxed, and pit-fired or put into the kiln with experimental processes that leave unpredictable surfaces mapping the violence of the process. Pastels and paint are layered, scratched back, and rebuilt. The studio is the vessel for all this activity. The ship taking me and all this cargo to its destination.
There is no clean separation here between making and thinking. The works in progress exist in constant dialogue with each other and with the artist as I move between them. Meaning accumulates through touch, weight, and repetition as much as through concept or intention. I often sit and stroke the faces of the baby sculptures or stare at a painting for hours.
The shed is also a space of recovery and salvage. Little is wasted. Broken ceramics remain part of the work. Fallen timber becomes sculpture. A abandoned road sign becomes a shelf.
Outside, the Culloden moorland stretches toward the Firth. The landscape is never far away finds its way into the work too.
