In 2019, a dog, closely followed by a pandemic the following year, changed my life. So many tectonic things happened, for everyone, and corresponding shifts of perspective continue to change us in ways we don’t yet realise. The Bright Fields became my own urgent search for a new visual rootedness in place and the land, as I found myself walking, tramping, and squelching through Wiltshire. The photographs take in Cotswold countryside, farming practices, biodiversity, and the occasional glimpse of Gus the black labrador with my children. I’m ranging around the source of the Bristol River Avon, a river I have lived close to for over 30 years, across 9 different homes along its length.

My walking developed as a pilgrimage, and alongside the photographs, I wrote a long-form poem inspired by the biblical book of Psalms. Hebrew poetry in the Psalms is emphatic, prayerful, direct, yet also balanced and sure-footed. Responding to each Psalm in turn, I found hooks in the language and composed my own song about the natural world. Inspired by illuminated psalters, I am, in 2025, building my own illuminated manuscript with the colour of Cotswold geography and a world on fire. This will be my photographic psalter, The Canticles of the Bright Fields, to be published and exhibited in 2027 as the culmination of my residency on the Athelstan Pilgrim Way.