Recent fieldwork relating to my application for the MA in Wall Painting Conservation at the Courtauld. Includes photographs and personal notes, some of which are in narrative draft-form, and demonstrate an immediate response to space and surface. Some relevant professional experience is also included below.
Greek islands, 2025
In June I was lucky to visit the monasteries and nunneries of Hydra and Poros, to talk with the nuns, and to examine their wall paintings up close. I learnt that the Hydra nuns saved their paintings from wild fires forty years ago using wet towels, whilst seeking refuge under the altar.
I examine the paintings of Hydra monastery (Mount Eros), taking on the conservator’s perspective.
Some images were built in layers of pigment, with gold as a base, and pink-blue layers. In places, peach-pink pigment has been slowly lifted to evoke gleaming gold-pink robes and a blue-bird flying.
One image appears to have woodworm damage. Another, deep cracks that run vertically; uniform, at regular intervals; perhaps marks formed in storage.
A monk passes by, enrobed in black and grey, weighted, slow.
A day of walking in exhausted June heat, beginning to feel the acute ache of heat stroke. Then, the opening of a church, discovered in the crown of Poros old town. Cool white church, cave-like, a haven for the heat-oppressed. Peeling icon-images circumambulate the interior. Burning beeswax candles, metallics and red velvet, fragmented white-wash. All this evokes a precious living intimacy.
Earlier that day we visited a small church on top of the mountain, discovering an interior of contemporary wall paintings; royal blue background and a series of full-length holy people. On the left-hand side of the room; women saints, on the right; men. I inspect and photograph the women saints, curious.
Lascaux IV, Dordogne, France, 2025
While staying in the Dordogne region of France, I visited the Lascaux IV paintings, and was deeply affected by their mysterious beauty.
For many months, I consider pigment blown through a tube 20,000 years ago; red into ochre into black; and dream-like animal forms, vast and small, beyond scale.
A series of images, felt and seen.
‘Here, as so often, the places where rock art is found speak to our soul. This experience is quite different from that of being in a museum, viewing paintings by great masters in an artificial space. Rock art is part of nature, and it achieves its full significance in the context of the landscapes–frequently spectacular and grandiose–that contain it.’ ‘Moreover, in certain traditional societies there is no word for art or artist. For them, the creative act is more important than the result. Certain Australian Aboriginal groups, for example, while fascinated by the meaning and beauty of these images on stone, believe that the original artist who created them “is only an agent of the Dreaming” – the collective ancestral past’ – quotations from Jean Clottes, World Rock Art.
Reykjavík residency, Iceland, 2025
Returning to Iceland, where I studied in 2018, for the fifth time. Gathering material for research projects and writing.
Birmingham Museum Trust painter’s assistant role, 2021 & 2024
2021 (left & centre): Assisting in the creation of a 305cm by 610cm oil painting, inspired by research on plant-blindness and climate change. The painting will be exhibited in the ThinkTank’s ‘Our Changing Planet Gallery’ until 2031.
2024 (right): Assisting in the creation of a wall painting for Dolphin Women Centre café, Ward End Birmingham. Responsibilities included creating stencils, painting borders and outlines, mixing and preparing paint, etc.
Leading biophilic (love of nature) artist workshops at Compton Verney Gallery (right) and in schools throughout the West Midlands (left) through my Arts Council England funded role with Salt Road, 2025.
The Courtauldian issues 28 & 29, Tongues in Trees and Through Each Chartered Street, which I worked on as Literary Editor during my time on the Buddhist Art MA.
As Literary Editor, I co-curated a nature-based art exhibition at Photobookcafe, Shoreditch, to launch Tongues in Trees. I also exhibited my tapestries, commissioned four local artists, coordinated a clay-sculpting workshop, and managed exhibition logistics.