Notes from the Wood (This collection of images was exhibited at the Lillie Art Gallery, Station Rd.,Milngavie in Oct 2019).

On the shores of Loch na Keal on the Isle of Mull is a pocket of temperate rainforest. The stunted and twisted oak trees growing amongst boulders covered in thick, green moss give all the appearance of a fantasy forest. Strange shapes are formed from both the living and dead wood. It was this fascinating pocket of wood that instigated this particular project though it wandered from there into the oak woods by Loch Lomond and ultimately came much closer to home in Mugdock Wood by Milngavie (where I live). It was here that I found myself following the Spring, drawn in by the subtle beauty of what was on my own doorstep.

I’ve always loved the woods. As a child, my favourite book was Enid Blyton's 'The Magic Faraway Tree' and that sense of the wood as a place of enchantment has never gone away. I find them beautiful and atmospheric but also imbued with a frisson of fear. For those who have a sufeit of Pareidolia ( the tendency to see form, especially faces, where no form exists), the wood is full of characters. Some, I have found, hang around for a while and become familiar companions, others come and go and are not where you thought they were. When you come to look again, they’ve mysteriously disappeared or they do appear, disturbingly, right behind you in what feels like a completely different place to where you last encountered them.

These images are the notes I have made. Some are the woods and some are a weave of the woods and the imaginary wood that has stalked me from the beginning.