I am still investigating this intuitive need to be close to the forest.
What I know for now is that it feels like something primary, an extremely basic need that has been with me for as long as I can remember. It feels deeply rooted in me, in my body and in my mind.
Being in the forest feels different.
The impact of forests on the human body is already quite well documented, but I have a feeling there is much more to understand. I want to look deeper into what actually happens when we enter these environments, what we exchange with them, what our bodies respond to, and why being there can feel so fundamentally different.
There is also something else I have noticed.
Even when I am making art in my studio or at home, working with images and structures taken from forests can bring that feeling back.
For a moment, I am there again.
I am in the forest.
I am drawn to very different kinds of forest environments, not only ancient trees or old woodland.
Sometimes it is a monumental tree that stops me. At other times it can be a dense patch of scrub, exposed roots, fallen timber, ferns, water moving through vegetation, a holloway, a ravine, or the repeated structure of a managed forest.
I am interested in places where forms overlap, interfere with one another and become difficult to separate: roots entering rock and walls, trees leaning across gaps, dead trunks among living ones, branches becoming tangled, vegetation growing through built structures, and paths shaped over time by both human movement and natural forces.
Even when architecture appears, I am often drawn to tunnels, corridors, passages and repetition.
What connects these places is not their age, rarity or beauty, but the relationships they reveal.
I am not photographing isolated objects.
I am photographing connections.
There are no two exactly the same forests. Every time they are different, fascinating, sometimes challenging.
For years I have felt a constant excitement about visiting new places and returning to favourite ones. Even then, they are changing: through the seasons, through growth, decay, weather, disturbance and regeneration.
This tension between change and continuity is one of the things that keeps drawing me back.
Constantly changing, yet somehow still. Still there.
Published: 17/09/2026
