This year’s course taught by Eleanor K White at the brilliant Bridge House Art, was all about size and scale, near and far and looking at the detail. A really good change of focus for me – both the horizon and the foreground packed with differences to home. In the distance the imposing, muscular mountains and in the foreground delicate flowers suspended in the kind of air that rarely exists in Orkney. Now and then I explore ways of drawing the botanical elements into the landscape, so this was a chance to consider ways of achieving that again and adding to the repertoire of ideas to try back in the studio.

Of course a week at Bridge House Art is also a social event so meeting up with old and new students, talking about our art journeys and responses to the course tasks was, as ever, hugely valuable and rewarding.