From Orkney back to Falkirk: unpacking the landscape through making

There's a particular kind of stillness you find in Orkney. Not silence exactly, but space. Space to think, to notice, to feel where you are in relation to everything around you. After spending April there for my latest solo exhibition, I've come back to Falkirk carrying more than paintings. I've come back with a need to unpack the experience.

During the exhibition, I sold over 50 paintings, something I am incredibly grateful for. But what has stayed with me wasn't just the outcome. It was the process of being there: walking along the coastline, watching the light shift hour by hour, noticing how the horizon holds everything together. Orkney has a way of stripping things back. It makes you realise how much of painting isn't about adding, but responding.

Since returning, I've been thinking a lot about how to hold onto that way of seeing and how to share it. That's where my upcoming classes at Studio164, Falkirk come in.

Rather than jumping straight into producing new finished work, I wanted to create space to process the experience. Teaching feels like a natural extension of that. It slows things down. It creates room for conversation, experimentation and reflection. Not just for me, but for everyone in the room.

The sessions I am running over four Friday afternoons in May are centred around landscape, but not in a traditional sense. We'll be using print, paper and paint as ways to explore feeling and memory as much as place. The aim isn't to recreate a view, but to respond to it whether that's a real landscape, somewhere remembered or something more abstract.

Orkney reinforced something I've felt for a while: that people don't need more rules when it comes to creativity. They need permission. Permission to play, to be unsure, to follow instinct rather than aiming for a 'right' result.

That's the kind of space I'm trying to build in these classes.

Studio164 is the perfect setting for that approach. It's an artist-led space right in the centre of Falkirk, built around the idea that creativity should be accessible and welcoming. There is a real sense of openness there, people come in at all stages, whether they haven't picked up a brush in years or are already developing their own practice. That mix of experience creates a dynamic, supportive environment where people can learn from each other as much as from me.

What I'm most interested in is helping people reconnect; with materials, with observation and with themselves. Life is busy and it's easy to lose that connection. Taking a few hours to focus on making, to really look at colour, texture and space, can be surprisingly grounding.

In many ways, that's what Orkney gave me. And these classes feel like a way of continuing that, of translating something quite personal into a shared experience.

There are still a few spaces available if you'd like to join. Booking is through www.studio164falkirk.co.uk