Journal

A Return to Galloway: Place, Self, and Creative Threads

There are places we think we know—until we return. This year, for my birthday, I packed up the car, Teasel curled in the back, and headed south to Galloway, tucked in the southwest corner of Scotland. A quiet, often-overlooked landscape, passed by on the way to grander destinations. But it holds something deeper. I first came here in my twenties, focused on academic pursuits and creative ambition. This time, I came not just to revisit a place, but to see what had changed—in the light, in the land, and in me.

Back then, I was immersed in a PhD on Robert Burns—not the poet, but the early 20th-century artist and first head of painting and drawing at Edinburgh College of Art. Burns dissolved boundaries between disciplines, turning his hand to tearooms, biscuit tins, garden gates, and oil paintings alike. That fluidity fascinated me then, and perhaps even more now.

Much of my time was spent in the archives of E.A. Hornell, Burns’ friend and fellow artist, who settled in Kirkcudbright and helped shape it into a community for makers. They came for the light—limpid and painterly. But at that time, I saw the surface, not the soul. Returning now, I saw what I had missed. Kirkcudbright isn’t just labelled an artists’ town—it breathes art. In plant pots on doorsteps, in the colour of gates, in conversations overheard in galleries. Art isn’t something displayed—it’s lived.

One moment stayed with me: a visit to the Jessie M. King exhibition at the Kirkcudbright Galleries. A Glasgow Girl, King was a master of many forms—painter, illustrator, designer of textiles, jewellery, wallpapers, china. She moved across media without pause or hierarchy. I’d read her letters years ago but somehow missed her textile work—batik scarves for Liberty, pictorial curtains, her intricately handmade world. This time, I saw them clearly. And I wondered: what else have I missed, simply because I wasn’t yet ready to see?

I learned that King once published a batik guide with the unforgettable title How Cinderella Went to the Ball. It blended instruction with story—a rhythm I find again and again in creative women of that era. Their work doesn’t stay in the lines. It flows, spills, defies categories.

That spirit is familiar. Years after my time in art history, I began another kind of collection: plants. With a small garden and small children, I leaned into horticulture. I learned names. I experimented. I sought the rare and the resilient. I would save up and drive to Galloway, where a few quietly brilliant nurseries were growing magic in walled gardens.

They’re still there. Two of them, still thriving. Plant shopping brings joy, but what moved me most this time was the reverence for growth. Every conversation with a grower reminded me why I built my studio: to help others grow creatively—with reverence, with readiness. To send out supplies, yes—but more than that, to send out permission.

Because the women I teach haven’t stopped being creative. They’ve just stopped noticing that they still are.

I also returned to the land itself. I’ve always gathered from the natural world—shells, feathers, stones. But layered now on that collector’s instinct is something older: a pull toward prehistory. Toward places shaped by thousands of years of human presence.

We visited cairns and stone circles, standing in silence where ancient waters once supported trade and ritual. I felt the same tug I do when making: that this work is not new. It is ancient. It matters.

Women in midlife often speak of a shift—of waking to what’s been long ignored. That shift came for me in my late forties. Since then, I’ve followed it: through old places, through plants, through dye and thread, through the quiet act of making.

This trip reminded me of who I was—and who I am still becoming. I saw what I’d missed the first time. I saw what I hadn’t been ready to see. And I wonder:

What might you be called to return to?

Not to fix.
Not to finish.

Just to re-see.

If you’re feeling the pull to pick up a creative thread, The Studio is always open. We hold space for work begun long ago, for tools waiting to be used again, for lives that still long to make.

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