I arrived on Eilean Shona with limited tools and no fixed plans. I wanted to embrace the ambiguity, step along an undefined path and see where the journey took me.
It takes time to slow the mind, push the urgency to make aside, and simply look, walk and feel. The island is one of the few remaining fragments of Celtic rainforest. Beardy Usnea hangs from ancient birches, pines tower above you, and a deep blanket of moss covers the forest floor. The shoreline too is veiled in a cloak of seaweed, and you are struck by the softness this island holds.
I would gather what I found on the island in an old fishing net that had been washed up and began to make small things. The waters are so clear, the air so clean, and you become very aware of nature’s natural ability to heal and repair. I dried Oarweed over boat buoys with thoughts of making a pair of lungs, flattened its tentacles to make a pair of kid gloves and stitched cocoon shapes with unravelled fishing net. The seaweed was too brittle to withstand the heavy nylon thread, but each one felt like a gesture of nurturing care.
I was concerned, before leaving, about the solitude. Where would a month alone on an island take my mind? I pictured long stretches of daunting silence that I would have to push through to find the pleasure in the stillness. What I hadn’t realised was that the poetry and writing course would coincide with the first week of my stay. Nine incredible writers’ laughter would drift up through the trees to Red Cottage, or I would bump into them while rummaging along the island’s paths.
I had brought some Agar Agar powder and glycerine with me but had managed to leave behind my sketchpad, something I felt totally adrift without. I began to make a bio-resin diary - a calendar to record the twenty-seven days I was on the island. In the evenings, I would extract natural dyes by boiling pinecones, bracken, and kelp, plus a little cheating from a beetroot leaf and some inedible spirulina powder I had packed with good intentions. The course was run by Salena Godden, who kindly lent me extracts from her own island diary. Her words deeply resonated with my experience of this magical place, and I included her writings for the calendar days that we all shared the island and left blank the remaining times I was alone.
Red Cottage sits high in the pine woods. Dried scales of bark fall from the trunks, exposing soft new red flesh. As a form of snake ecdysis, I began puncturing holes in the shavings and threading them together with a bit of old rope. I kept returning to thoughts of regeneration - this island echoed it everywhere. It made me aware of how often I’ve held onto form too tightly in my work, too concerned with finishing and controlling. Eilean Shona offered a kind of temporal generosity - to make, unmake, and let go - and in this, I began to feel a personal shift - a slow peeling back of habit, a softening of the need to define. The bark scales became less material and more metaphor; I was learning to let old layers fall away, trusting that something tender and new lay just beneath.
Each morning, I would commute the 20 minutes through the moss-covered forest to the loch-side studio. I worked long days, punctuated with cold swims, walks, rummaging and thinking.
My sole responsibility was to respond to place, and I became increasingly aware of the rare privilege this residency held. I had no demands of artist talks, no final exhibition - just an unadulterated exploration of practice. With limited tools, I found that the kind of creative austerity became an absolute freedom. The absence of expectations made space for a sort of presence I rarely allow myself in my day-to-day studio life.
Most of what I made during the residency was ephemeral and returned to the land or sea. The only piece I chose to leave behind was the moss ring - a form to reflect the cyclical nature of life so evident on the island. It became a kind of iris, to look out across the raw beauty while also nudging gently inward towards the depth of your being. My time had coincided with a red moon and the planetary alignment, and these celestial events felt quietly significant.
As I sit now within the walls of my studio wedged against the graffitied underbelly of London’s M40 Westway, I realise even more what an absolute honour and privilege it was to have a month on Eilean Shona. I cannot thank the Royal Society of Sculptors and Vanessa Branson for their kindness and generosity. It was a residency that will stay with me long beyond its month duration and will continue to weave into my practice, inform my concepts and colour the whole approach to my work. Thank you.
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