Deeper into the Deep Woods

It’s getting busy in the borderland.

Friends,

The dark is gently falling with the leaves here in the borderlands. This week I did my first night drive since spring, travelling under a dazzlingly bright moon with the beams from the headlights brushing the blue shadows of the hedges. I stopped, got out of the car, and stared, with the creaturely silence all around me and just the occasional swish of tyres as a car passed in the distance. A tawny owl has taken up residence in a nearby garden and I’m hoping it will come over to our house to perch on the roof, inches above my head, and hoot gently while I doze. Bliss.

It’s been a busy summer for me, setting up a studio gallery and providing new work for several exhibitions. It’s gone better than expected and I’m grateful that I’ve been graced with more time for creative practice, something which seemed almost impossible a few years ago without kneeling before the gatekeepers. If you’re a struggling creative, don’t give up. NEVER give up.

It’s also a year since I began Into the Deep Woods. A book’s worth of essays are safely stored in the archive and I now want to expand the offering here and take better advantage of the Substack platform, which seems to get more sophisticated by the day. I want to broaden the scope of the work, to portray more of this borderland I live and work in, to show more of the hills and mountains, the ancient villages, deep history and culture of this place. Also, most of all, I want to dig into the subject of creative practice as a way of connection, something I’m passionate about to the point of obsession. I’ve covered a little about this in past posts, but there’s so much more to delve into. Now is the time, and Substack is the place.

I’ll be adding a new mid-week edition, which will be published each Wednesday. Some of the stories will be more visual. I’m out with my camera a lot now, and I’ve even invested in a fancy new sound recorder which will enable me to capture the soundscape of the borderland, to compliment the stories and images, and to let me read and speak while I’m out and about. I’ll be interspersing these episodes with a new series of posts I’m calling On Making. Since the publication of Two Lights last year I’ve been putting together ideas for a project about makers and making. A maker is what I am, and other makers have been the main inspirations of my life, they’ve given me all the examples I have for a good way to live, whether poets (the word poet in its essential form means maker) potters, painters, printmakers, textile artists, woodworkers - they’re people who’ve dedicated their lives to beauty and craft. I’ll be looking at their work, and encouraging you to share your own inspirations with the community.

For the Saturday edition I’ll be keeping the RIMA theme going for the most part, but I’m also working on a series which I’m calling Beginners Mind. This will focus on the things I’ve learned from my own decades long, multi-disciplinary creative practice, which has all been self taught. I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way but I honestly believe that anything can be done with a beginners mind. If you’re a creative person seeking to deepen your practice, or if you want to learn new ways to connect to your wilder, more creative self, these posts will explore some of the methods I’ve learned.

Into the Deep Woods will also be the place where I share new artwork before it’s released into the wider world, before it even appears in my own gallery. I’m creating a space in the studio where newly finished and unframed pieces can be hung, a place where I can light them properly and photograph them at their best. I’ll talk about each piece and put together a little video series for the community. Paid subscribers will also receive a 15% discount on all artwork - prints and originals. For instance the discount for a subscriber paying the monthly fee of £5 would be £6.75 on an A3 signed print, more than recouping the cost of the subscription. The discount on a large original painting would be more than £100. A discount code will be available at the bottom of each post (including this one) to be used on my website and in the gallery.

With the expansion of my work here free posts will now become less frequent. However, I’ve just agreed to write a monthly Letters from . . . column for Nation Cymru, which is a free site and I’ll link to those essays from the preview section in each post. One essay has already been published and you can read it here. I will also keep several essays from the Into the Deep Woods archive open for free access.

Into the Deep Woods is therefore getting deeper. I hope you’ve enjoyed the journey so far. The next year will be an adventure!

Now for this week’s story about strange findings in the wood and memories of the landscape I grew up in.

Hope you like it.

J