I balance my visual arts practice with my writing, as tandem aspects of the same creative inquiry. I also work with other artists and writers as a creative coach. Most recently, I received a Visual Arts and Craft Maker Award from Orkney Islands Council in 2021, and completed a major public art commission for the new Balfour Hospital in Kirkwall in 2019. My first book, The Clearing, was published by Little Brown in 2020.

I trained at Edinburgh College of Art, Belgrade Academy of Fine Arts, and the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL. In 2010 I gained an MA in Environmental Philosophy from the University of Central Lancashire, and I was awarded a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of St Andrews in 2017.

I have taught at Edinburgh College of Art, the University of the West of Scotland, as well as guest lecturing at the Tasmanian School of Art, Central St Martins and Gray’s School of Art. I am a fellow of the Higher Education Academy and I now provide online tutoring for the University of Hertfordshire and teach occasionally at the University of the Highlands and Islands.

I have carried out residencies at the British School at Rome, The University of Oxford, Grizedale, Tasmanian School of Art in Hobart, Scottish Sculpture Workshop, Stills Gallery, IAAB International Residency Programme in Basel, Wysing Arts, and Timespan Arts and Heritage in Helmsdale.

I have been commissioned to make major public art works for The Balfour Hospital, Kirkwall, Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Great Ormond Street Hospital and Auchterarder Community School. I was recently commission by the National Library of Scotland to write and create a series of drawings for their “Fresh Ink’ series of work in response to 2020.

Previous awards include a Scottish Arts Council Artist’s Award, a Carnegie Research Award, an RSA Art for Architecture Award and a British Council Scholarship, a Scottish Book Trust New Writer’s Award, and a Scottish Emerging Writer Residency at Cove Park