Let’s Walk and Talk
I've always loved being in transit.
As a child, I carried a pencil everywhere. On car journeys, train rides, walks home from school, I'd press it to a notebook and let it move with whatever carried me forward. The sway of a car. The rhythm of my footsteps. I wasn't trying to draw anything in particular. I just liked following the line and seeing where it would lead.
Looking back, I don't think much has changed.
I'm an artist that walks. Or perhaps a walker that makes art. Most of my ideas arrive when I'm moving, when my body is busy and my mind is free to wander. I've created many works whilst walking, because of walking, and alongside walking.
Currently I wake up in Cornwall, and return to the same stretch of coastal path most mornings. Every day the cliffs are the same, yet every day feels different. The light shifts. The tide moves. The horizon plays its usual game of staying just out of reach.
I find myself looking for traces.
Not just traces left by other people, but traces of myself. A place where I stopped to look out at the sea. A bend in the path where an idea first arrived. The landscape changes, but so does the person walking through it.
Perhaps that's why I keep returning to certain trails.
One of them is the Fishermen's Trail in Portugal. My intention is to walk it every two years, retracing my footsteps along the coast. I like the thought of meeting different versions of myself along the same path.
I also like the idea of marking every place my shoelaces have come undone throughout the years.
Maybe one day I'll learn to double-knot them.
Until then, I'll keep stopping, tying them up, and carrying on.
Most of my ideas seem to live somewhere out there, teasing the horizon. And for now, I'm quite happy following them.
Holly,
Somewhere on the north coast.
