Artist Books
- jadestout
- Jan 26
- 2 min read
Artist books and sketchbooks have long been a quiet but important part of my practice. They sit somewhere between object, image and experience not quite a book in the conventional sense and not quite an artwork for the wall. They ask to be handled, opened, lived with. Meaning unfolds slowly, through sequence, repetition, and pause.
Recently, I’ve been returning to artist books as a way to think through landscape, memory, and material. Especially horizon lines and how these are encountered over time rather than in a single glance.
Books as objects
What draws me to artist books is their physicality. Texture, scale, binding and rhythm all matter as much as the images themselves. A page turn can echo walking; a blank page can feel like weather or distance.
Lately, I’ve been experimenting with cockle shells as book covers, using them both structurally and symbolically. Collected from the shore, they carry traces of place, touch and time. As covers, they shift the book to something closer to a found object or a keepsake.
Each shell is different. Each book asks for careful handling. This fragility and specificity feels important to the work.
A quieter way of encountering landscape
Much of my wider practice is rooted in landscape, particularly coastal environments. Artist books allow me to explore this without trying to “resolve” an image into a single painting.
Instead, they make space for:
repetition and variation
fragments and partial views
slow attention rather than spectacle
These are not books to rush through. They invite lingering, re-visiting and personal interpretation.
Fruitmarket Artists’ Bookmarket
I’ll be sharing a selection of my artist books at the Fruitmarket Artists’ Bookmarket in Edinburgh on 14 & 15 February, including recent pieces that use cockle shells as covers alongside more traditional bound works.
Bookmarkets feel like a natural home for this kind of practice, spaces where small, tactile works can be encountered directly, handled and discussed. They offer a different kind of exchange: quieter, slower and more conversational.
If you’re interested in artist books, landscape or artworks that exist beyond the wall, I’d love you to come and spend some time with the work.
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