Artist Roots & Influences.

The Artist.

I am an Edinburgh-based artist currently undertaking an MA in Fine Art: Digital at Central Saint Martins. Working primarily with ink, my practice centres on the emotional and psychological resonance of landscapes. My work explores themes of memory, belonging, and the subtle tension between natural environments and human intervention.

Rooted in a long-standing reverence for the natural world, I use fine line techniques and fluid washes to explore the interplay of light, shadow, and texture within imagined and real terrains. Many of my recent works draw from sites of personal significance - places tied to family memory, childhood experience, or a quiet sense of displacement. These locations often reveal an unspoken energy or layered history that I seek to evoke through composition, mark-making, and the tonal qualities of ink.

As my practice has evolved, I’ve begun experimenting with larger-scale pieces that allow for a more immersive engagement with space and scale. This shift has introduced new challenges and rewards: a loss of control that opens space for new freedom, and the emergence of dreamlike or even haunting atmospheres through layering and shadow. I’ve also been reflecting more deeply on how specific landscapes - particularly ancient woodlands and remote trails - can act as vessels for both personal and collective memory.

Influenced by traditional ink painting as well as contemporary landscape artists, my work continues to grow through a process of slow observation, experimentation, and response. Whether through a fine line or a dark fluid wash, I am interested in how ink can carry memory - how it can speak softly or insistently, depending on how it’s handled.

Ultimately, my practice is about finding and translating emotional truths in quiet places - creating works that invite the viewer to pause, reflect, and listen to what the land might be trying to say.

Background & Influences.

I grew up between Edinburgh and the Scottish Highlands, in a village on the edge of the Ellan and Glencharnoch Woods - landscapes shaped by wind, moss, and memory. Wild coastal paths, ancient pine forests, and stories passed through generations formed the quiet backdrop to my childhood and continue to shape my artistic practice today.

I carry many labels: artist, autistic, sister, daughter, partner. I also live with chronic pain and autoimmune conditions, which have deeply affected how I move through the world—often slowing me down, sometimes isolating me, but also teaching me to listen more closely to my body and to the rhythms of the natural world. These embodied experiences of constraint and adaptation often find their way into my work, not always directly, but as a subtle undercurrent: in the textures of a landscape, the stillness of a shadow, the tension between control and surrender in how the ink settles on the page.

In many ways, painting is how I process what can’t easily be put into words. My practice allows me to express feelings that exist beyond language - grief, longing, hope, and fatigue - particularly those that live in the body. Family is central to this process. Through my work, I find myself reaching toward those no longer with us, including my Nana Kay, who was also an artist. Though we never met, I feel a quiet connection with her through art. Once, unknowingly, I painted the same Highland scene she had captured years earlier. It was only when my mum saw the piece that the link was made. That moment still resonates deeply: a reminder that art can act as a bridge across generations and offer a kind of unspoken continuity.

I am especially drawn to landscapes that feel emotionally charged - where memory seems embedded in the terrain, where a tree, a ruin, or a curve in the path holds something more than itself. I work primarily from photographs taken during walks, often in places tied to personal or ancestral memory. These photos aren’t blueprints, but starting points - emotional entryways into the piece. Music often helps me enter a state of flow, especially fast-paced or intense compositions that let me disconnect from pain and fully engage with the fluidity of ink.

My affinity for the natural world runs beyond my painting practice. Alongside my partner, I try to grow most of our food, nurturing plants from seed and learning from the seasons. Gardening has become both a grounding routine and a form of resistance - a slow, hopeful act of care in a world that often demands speed and output. Like my art, it’s an ongoing conversation with time, change, and resilience.

Whether through ink or soil, my work is about tending - tending to memory, to place, to pain, and to possibility. These threads run quietly through each painting, offering a space to pause and reflect, and perhaps to feel something that can't quite be spoken.