Dialogues with Nature

:: Dialogues with Nature Network has launched and is currently open for new members to join until 16 July. Find out more here.

:: If you feel the flowers and trees are calling, the grasses are whispering your names, come and join us in the Meadow, our Foundation Course here.

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In this episode I’m talking to Catalina Christensen who is an inspiring painter and pigment collector. Her work centres around a personal connection to landscape through the colours she finds and extracts from nature in the places she visits. Her inspiration comes from her early years, hearing of the great Italian Renaissance painters, of alchemy and the inherent human need to be creative and leave traces. She talks about her journey through many countries, coming from an architectural background and how she arrived at her current art practice in great detail. How and where it all started and what techniques and materials she uses in her work.

‘A painting begins with collecting the rocks for the pigments. The gathering and processing of pigments is an artistic endeavour in itself’

Catalina is also the co-founder of Wilderness Art Collective, a platform for artists whose work responds to the environment, for discussions about beauty and diversity in their creative work.

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Some references from our conversation:

The place with the rock paintings in Colombia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1chica

Landlines exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society

https://www.rgs.org/

Wilderness Art Collective https://www.wildernessart.org/

Cornelissen - a quaint old place in London where you can buy pigments if you don’t want to make your own. https://www.cornelissen.com/

You can follow Catalina on instagram and on twitter

https://www.catalinachristensen.com/

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If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share it with a friend.
You can find me as @walkinglantern on instagram and on twitter.

Also, if you appreciate the time and effort that goes into making this podcast you can buy me a coffee here.

:: Dialogues with Nature Network has launched and is currently open for new members to join until 16 July. Find out more here.

:: If you feel the flowers and trees are calling, the grasses are whispering your names, come and join us in the Meadow, our Foundation Course here.

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In this episode I'm talking to Monica Griesbaum from Windy Hollow Tea Farm in Scotland who tells us all about how she lives and works in dialogue with nature through her beautiful relationship with tea, natural farming.

Monica generously shares her knowledge and experience about tea growing and tea making. She learnt traditional tea making techniques in Taiwan and took that back to Scotland with her, where she started her own tea farm growing her tea plants from seeds. Monica has a great respect for nature and the ecosystem in her farm and places a big emphasis on only using natural farming technique. She also tells us about organic and biodynamic farming and her passion to care for all living things.

‘Sometimes labels separate us, but we have so much overlap, similar aims and we can work towards we wish to achieve.’

Furthermore, we talk about the new tea culture in the West and legacy of the East. There seem to be an important thing that kept reappearing in our conversation, the connection between the farmer and the plants, between the leaves and the tea maker during preparation, the connection between the dry tea leaves and person preparing and drinking the tea. Also, the connection between tea farmers, tea makers, tea houses and tea drinkers seem to be a symbiotic one. They mutually depend on one another, just as much as the growth of healthy tea plants depend on the natural predators and the fertilisers in the soil, the temperature and water. The nuances of fine naturally grown tea can bear witness to a specific historic moment in time, whether the season was dry or exceptionally hot, how much rain there was as much as it has the fingerprint of the maker who plucks, rolls and dries the tea with their skill, care and patience.

Monica gives some wonderful advice to those wishing to embark on their own tea journey and encourages us to be open and keep learning.

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Recommended book to read by Monica:

One Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka

Recommendations from me:

The Life of Tea: A Journey to the World’s Finest Teas

The Book of Tea (Penguin Little Black Classics)

[For the sake of transparency, I’m receiving a tiny percentage if you order a book from Amazon through on of these links above.]

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You can follow Monica on instagram and on twitter

https://www.windyholloworganics.co.uk/

and you can also listen to Monica's new podcast Tea, Mud and Hope

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If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with a friend. You can find me as @walkinglantern on instagram and on twitter.

Also, if you appreciate the time and effort that goes into making this podcast you can buy me a coffee here.

:: Dialogues with Nature Network has launched and is currently open for new members to join until 16 July. Find out more here.

:: If you feel the flowers and trees are calling, the grasses are whispering your names, come and join us in the Meadow, our Foundation Course here.

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‘The everyday can be extraordinary. These small and seemingly normal things going on outside are extraordinary. That connection what can bring us so much joy for so little.’

Today I’m talking to Eleanor Cheetham whose work is rooted in nature and the seasons. She is a writer, editor and independent publisher. She was publishing Creative Countryside magazine in the past two years that you may know.

Eleanor lives in the Lincolnshire countryside with her family. She talks about her work and journey through Creative Countryside, publishing the magazine, and the inception of the seasonal community that has naturally evolved over time, realising the value of building in-person connections. Providing a platform where meeting others who love and feel inspired by nature has also become an important part of her work. Nurturing connection with nature in a group resulted in a collaborative partnership this year with another wildhearted women with whom together they launched Folk + Field, a creative nature inspired community.

Eleanor finds her inspiration on a daily basis in the local landscape, the fields and the hedgerow she walks past daily. In her words - ’it seems like such a simple thing, that really roots me but going the same way everyday, means that I see the exact moments when the rosehips turn, or the moment the hazelnuts are ready, or when the elderberries have fallen..' - Noticing these tiny moments are key and inspire her writing.

‘What we do won’t immediately yield instant results. It’s about the journey and connecting with nature, ourselves and like-minded others.’

Eleanor talks about her future plans. She is currently writing a book and also publishing a chapbook this Winter with poetry with hope to bring joy to people’s everydays throughout the darkest season of the year.

Drawing on her own experience, she is also about to begin offering mentoring for creative writing projects and self-publishing. She emphasises going at our own pace.

She also tells us about following the sun and the moon and cycles. the Celtic ‘Wheel of the year’ festivals and how these markers in the season reminds us of bigger cycle of the earth.

We are ending this episode on a note of awareness of transformation around and within us.

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Recommended books to read by Eleanor:

Glennie Kindred: Earth Wisdom - about the cycles of the Earth

- The English Year by Steve Roud - local landcape of folklore and traditions in England

Soil · Soul · Society: A New Trinity for Our Time by Satish Kumar

[For the sake of transparency, I’m receiving a tiny percentage if you order a book from Amazon through one of these links above.]

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You can follow Elanor on instagram @creativecountryside.

http://www.creativecountryside.com/

https://www.folkandfield.com/

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If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with a friend. You can find me as @walkinglantern on instagram and on twitter.

Also, if you appreciate the time and effort that goes into making this podcast you can buy me a coffee here.

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In this new episode, I’m talking to Ali Mackie, who is, a painter and mixed media artist based in the Chilterns in the UK. We talk about wide ranging subjects, encompassing all what it entails to live and work as an artist, including motherhood and how that experience influenced and informed our artistic journeys and how in its own magical way has given some weight to what we do now and, what we pursue as artists. We also talk about Ali's work in great detail.

Her main subject is nature and her inspiration comes from the landscape that captures her attention. She uses lots of unexpected colours in her work that is, part of her unique way of not only translating into artworks what she sees but expressing joy and beauty of her subject. Nature portrayed with bright colours plays an essential role in her paintings, collages and mixed media work. She also comes from, an interior design background, which, she tells me more about in our conversation, and how she draws on those experiences in her current work, both as a small business owner and as an artist.

• Ali’s website and Instagram
• Artists Support Pledge
• Ali’s Artist Support Pledge page

Recommended resources to read by Ali:

• Elle Decoration
• Michael Morgan RI in Waterstones
• Outlander - Diana Gabaldon in Waterstones

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If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe,
leave a review or share it with a friend.

You can find me as @walkinglantern on instagram and on twitter.

And if you are interested to hear more about Dialogues with Nature Network, please follow the new instagram account @dialogueswithnature here and sign up to the mailing list here.

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Ways you can financially support this podcast now:

• One time donation of a virtual cup of coffee here
• Become a regular patron supporting me with a recurring donation of £1 per month via Patreon here

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The music for the podcast is by Band of Burns ‘Now Westlin' Winds’ song that was recorded live at Union Chapel in 2017. I used this song with the band’s permission.

Follow Band of Burns on instagram here and their website for tour dates is here: https://www.bandofburns.com/

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As we find ourselves in the midst of these uncertain and disorienting times, I keep asking myself this question that probably many of you ask yourselves, too:

- How can I possibly be of service with what I have? through my creative practice?

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Dialogues with Nature podcast is back.

In this episode I’m pondering about where I am now, where we are all, the changes I’m going through and what we are experiencing at a global scale. I’m talking a lot about hope, how nature and a creative practice can be a solace, especially in our current times. Thinking through how creative work can continue in our dynamic times, how I could nurture more resilience through my practice and what possible ways there are moving forward.

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References from this episode:

• On Being podcast episode with Rebecca Solnit
• The entrepreanour, Tara Macmullin, whose work I find inspirational, the host of What Works podcast
• The poem by Emily Dickinson I refer to
• The piece titled ‘Lockdown’ that was originally posted on instagram by the author that I read aloud at the end of this episode
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Ways you can support this podcast:

• Donate me a virtual cup of coffee here
• Become a regular patron supporting me with a recurring donation of £1 per month via Patreon here
  

Interested to hear more about Dialogues with Nature Network I’m setting up?

• Watch the replay of a live virtual presentation I did on Monday here.
• Read my presentation notes from it here.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with a friend. You can find me as @walkinglantern on instagram and on twitter. And if you'd like to receive a newsletter, sign up to the mailing list here.