Set amongst a remote hill farming community in the heart of Northumberland, I lived and worked as artist in residence for one year. This residency had a profound affect on me, not only as an artist, but as a person. I created a body of work for a solo show called ‘1,873,333 Steps – A Peripatetic Investigation’ and fell in love with nature, walking and the importance of place. I completely immersed myself in the community and landscape of Tarset. I maintained a discipline of daily walks, data-collecting, and covered over 900 miles of countryside. I asked everybody I met in this isolated place if I could photograph their feet, creating an instant way to engage, and produce a photographic series called ‘Feet That I Meet’. I created artworks in direct response to the landscape, walking, and the immediacy of living within the local hill farming community. For example, in response to the demise of traditional skills such as dry stone walling, I created a paper stone wall by stitching local newspapers together creating individual paper stones, and built  ‘The Writing on the Wall’ with the knowledge and help of local skills .

To document my experience, a documentary film was created with film maker Steve White. View the film here.  I also documented my personal journey as an artist through writing a weekly blog for one year. View the blog here.

See published catalogue – https://varc.org.uk/artist-catalogues-free-to-download/