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moving through a

Shifting Landscape

Visual Art & Photography

via Scotland and Aotearoa New Zealand

Practice Notes

Notes on work, process and other stuff along the way…

  • Six from the mix : ii

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  • A thrumming beat…

    Black-and-white abstract street photograph using intentional camera movement, looking down at legs and feet mid-stride on pavement, with shadows fanning across the ground and thin light trails curling through the lower left.
    A thrumming beat, on singular feet

    In an earlier practice note, Something Epic Landscape, I outlined the new structure of the site: five threads designed to map a practice that’s moving constantly between painting, photography, montage and digital work. Since then, that approach has settled, and the focus has shifted to how the work actually enters the space. Rather than building rigid, fixed galleries that lock everything into a final sequence, the site now operates more like a living system.

    The homepage acts as a curated stream. At the moment, it randomly selects six images, drawing from across the practice to create unexpected adjacencies. A digital painting might surface beside an ICM street photograph or a quiet observational fragment, letting the underlying continuities of the work speak without needing a written explanation to tie them together.

    Each thread — PAINT, ICM, SHIFT, LANDSCAPE and URBAN — opens a wider field. The curation loosens here: five or six images are drawn from a broader batch specific to that thread, offering a sense of its range, rhythm and working logic.

    Deeper still are more open collections that sit alongside fixed series and galleries. Collections like Urbis, Digital Paint, Works on Paper, Intentional Movement and Urban Mashup draw from a broader batch again, presenting a wider range of standalone pieces, experimental clusters, works in progress, lesser sketches or studies, and older work returned from the archive. They give a sense of how the images actually emerge through process, accident and repetition.

    None of this is fixed. Each time the site updates, the selections within the threads can randomise, throwing up new combinations. The point is not to build a complete archive, but to give the work a container where it can gather, collide and keep moving through.

  • Six from the mix : i

    Starting an occasional post catching six images surfaced on Shifting Landscape’s homepage and keeping here as a snapshot of works brought together randomly from its five curated feeds (PAINT, ICM, SHIFT, LANDSCAPE, URBAN).

    Vertical black-and-white photograph centred on a large tree trunk, boughs and canopy. Circular camera movement transforms background light into repeated pale loops and rounded forms surrounding the broad, dark central structure.
    Strange Tree
    Dark black-and-white landscape photograph of a stunted Scots pine beside Loch Tulla, its twisting branches silhouetted against pale sky, water, small islands and distant Highland hills.
    Caledonian Pine, Loch Tulla
    (3:45pm Wednesday 1st December 2004)
    Abstract blurred photograph of orange and yellow flowers against dark green foliage, with pale blue and pink areas near the top and radiating motion softening the blooms into glowing colour.
    Colour Field
    Dense black-and-white vegetation scene with blurred grasses, branches, lens distortion and pale streaks opening into bright light at the upper right.
    wild landscape
    Black and white panoramic photograph of railway tracks and a pedestrian footbridge seen from a moving train. Two people walk on the bridge, while stitching glitches create horizontal bands and distortions across the sky and parts of the structure. Industrial buildings, utility boxes and trees appear beyond the tracks.
    Rolling Stock 5
    Chaotic abstract painting with jagged black, crimson, and gold forms suggesting ruined trees, scorched forest debris, and violent movement through a devastated landscape.
    Ruined Forest (2024)

  • Tiled Landscape

    Dense abstract drawing in red, blue, pink, green and ochre, with large figure-like forms, bird-like shapes, hands and patterned fragments. Cropped shapes continue across the edges so the panel can connect with the other three in different arrangements.
    Bright abstract drawing with a crowded circular centre surrounded by ochre, blue, red, pink and turquoise forms. A large animal-like shape crosses the top, while cropped edge fragments allow the panel to connect with the other three.
    Abstract drawing with large orange, ochre and blue forms crossing a field of smaller red, green, pink and violet fragments. Broad shapes reach the edges, allowing the panel to bridge and reconnect with the other three drawings.
    Densely packed abstract drawing in red, pink, blue, green and ochre, with mask-like forms, eyes, mouths, hands and animal-like fragments. Cropped shapes reach every edge so the panel can connect with the other three in changing configurations.

    Tiled Landscape I – IV

    Tiled Landscape I–IV consists of four small gel pen drawings on card. They were conceived as interchangeable panels, with no single fixed sequence.

    They were developed alongside one another rather than as separate drawings later assembled. Shapes run off the edges, meet differently and form new continuities each time the panels are rearranged.

    I’ve often thought of drawings like these as landscapes, even when figures, masks, bodies and other forms begin to appear. For me, landscape is less a backdrop than the environment those elements inhabit.

    These drawings sit within Works on Paper, alongside other analogue drawings, collage and sketchbook works.

    A few other arrangements…

    The four original Tiled Landscape drawings in another rectangular arrangement. Densely patterned sections meet broader blue, orange and ochre forms, creating a continuous field of faces, bodies, animal-like shapes, loops and coloured fragments.
    Alternative arrangement of the four original Tiled Landscape drawings, with open orange and turquoise forms towards the upper left and densely packed imagery towards the lower right. Visible joins divide the composition into four sections.
    The four original Tiled Landscape drawings rearranged into a rectangular composition. Broad orange, blue and ochre areas alternate with crowded clusters of interlocking figures, symbols and brightly coloured fragments.
    Alternative arrangement of the four original Tiled Landscape drawings in a rectangular formation. Large blue, ochre, orange and pink forms intersect with denser passages of small figures, faces, hands and patterned fragments

  • Something Epic Landscape…

    Black-and-white abstract urban landscape made with intentional camera movement, showing a bright flare in the upper left, a large billowing mass of light through the centre, and tangled white light trails across a dark lower area.
    Something epic landscape, incandescent bright

    I’ve neglected posting here for some time, but in my defence, I’ve been busy building a more structured website around the blog. I’m hoping that, with more regular posts, the blog will become a central gateway into a deeper exploration of my practice.

    As part of this, I’ve been experimenting with AI to help me audit and map the work I’ve made over the last four decades. The process has helped me clarify some of the longer strands already present in my work and to see more clearly how different bodies of work connect.

    Two of those longer strands have become especially clear. Images often emerge through process rather than from fixed plans, while landscape has remained less a subject than an ongoing relationship with land, place and memory. Those concerns surface in different ways across photography, painting, drawing, intentional camera movement, montage and digital work.

    The website is now organised around five main threads:

    PAINT
    Painting, digital painting and works on paper.

    ICM
    Intentional camera movement photography.

    SHIFT
    Montage, multiple exposure and experimental photographic work.

    LANDSCAPE
    Landscape photography from Scotland, Aotearoa New Zealand and elsewhere.

    URBAN
    Urban, outdoor and street photography.

    These are not rigid divisions. The work often overlaps, with painting informing photography, landscape moving into the city, and movement, walking, altered optics and digital construction passing between them.

    Each thread opens into deeper series pages, open collections and developing bodies of work. I’ve also added internal navigation to make the longer pages easier to explore.

    The site is still evolving, and I’ll continue adding images, series and writing over the coming months. My hope is that the new structure makes the work easier to navigate while allowing connections between different parts of the practice to emerge more clearly.

    Explore each thread:

    Abstract digital painting of interlocking green, blue, black, white and red shapes, including a central spiky form surrounded by bird-like, plant-like and symbol-like elements, suggesting a dense forest atmosphere.
    PAINT
    High-key black-and-white street photograph with dark figures walking through a bright white space, surrounded by curling light trails, with one distinct figure on the right.
    ICM
    Dense vertical white, cream and gold streaks fill the frame, broken by vivid blue areas and darker earthy passages.
    SHIFT
    Black-and-white landscape photograph of an ancient stone circle on open moorland beneath heavy cloud and a dark, brooding sky.
    LANDSCAPE
    Black-and-white photograph of a chain-link gate with a “PRIVATE PROPERTY KEEP OUT” sign, dense foliage, wooden posts, a chain and a weathered tree trunk leaning diagonally across the entrance.
    URBAN