I spent most of last week on an art residency. For those of you from other walks of life, this is where you are invited and sometimes paid, to go away from home and make your art, often in response or relation to some aspect of the venue, people or institution that invite you.
Perhaps it's easier to sit a 7-day Zen retreat. My mind, stripped of all stimuli but my body and a blank wall, quickly quits struggling and at least attempts to settle to the task at hand; counting breaths, say. I am in a field, constantly stimulated, yet rebuffed, a whole day here and I am only at the surface, on the grass, looking down from human height.
I'm using my late friend Mark Watson's beautiful book The Plant Pamphlets as a guide and method for being here. Starting last night and finishing this morning I reread his book cover to cover and reminded myself of the simple but effective ‘hanging out with plants’ practice which is found within it. This morning after breakfast, I headed out into the field and walked around until I felt a particular plant calling to me to pay it my undivided attention. If you've never walked around anywhere noticing whether a plant, landform or rock is asking you to communicate, then you'd be forgiven for assuming that it's an outlandish practice and that I am officially woo. But I know you will have stopped to notice a pavement dandelion at some point in your life, the craggy beauty of a winter oak, or the sheer spiky effrontery of a bramble shoot thick as your thumb making its way through a fence, up into the elder tree and back down again, laden with pink flowers of blackberry-promises. You will at least have stopped for a rose.
This week’s podcast was first published here on Substack on Monday 23rd June 2025, with full footnotes, photos, links and extra sections.
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