I arrived at the residency with a ridiculous amount of ‘just in case’ equipment including a variety of cameras, films, chemistry and printing without a darkroom materials. Rather than work on a specific project themes or ideas, I wanted the freedom and opportunity to experiment and creatively respond to what the light and the landscape shared with me.

When I initially read about the residency, I was particularly struck by the studio space and the incredible estuary landscape on the other side of the studio windows. I thought how amazing it would be to transform the studio into a camera obscura and project the outside environment into a room that has hosted and enabled so much
creativity inspired by that landscape.

During my second week at the residency and a dream about making the camera obscura, a day with suitable light and weather conditions arrived. Using tinfoil to create a makeshift blackout, the camera obscura appeared across the back of the studio wall and ceiling– the landscape projected upside down. Standing inside the room as a camera, in the middle of a living breathing photograph – watching the estuary water ripple across the wall, was such a special experience and amazing to be able to show/share it with my co-resident, Katie King and our host Scarlett.

On my first morning I set up tiny pin hole cameras, made from plastic film canisters, placed at intervals along the estuary. In mid-February it felt like a leap of faith to attempt to make solargraphs – using the light from the sun to record its passage across the estuary. I took them down on the last evening at the residency with no idea if anything had been recorded. I was delighted to find a set of mysterious abstract images including strange globes of grey light.

I spent time each day exploring the estuary and local area on foot, capturing images on 35mm film, polaroid and my large format pinhole camera. I was particularly struck by the layers of texture in the landscape and the movement of light. A highlight of the residency was an evening spent at the Dragon Theatre in Barmouth, listening to the local Dragon Storytellers and Ffion Phillips. In their folk tales, they talked about ‘thin spaces’ the transitional places that exist between this world and the next. Thie idea of and interpretation of ‘thin spaces’ particularly resonated with me. In the months leading up to the residency I’ve been working on a book ‘Into the trees’, using time in the darkroom as a meditative tool to creatively remember and reimagine the
sensations of time spent in nature. In the Japanese Art of Forest Bathing, Dr Li Quin (1982) describes a deeper sensory awareness of nature. He states: ‘we know this deep in our bones. It is like an intuition, or an instinct - a feeling that is sometimes hard to describe. In Japanese, we have a word for those feelings that are too deep for words: yugen. Yugen gives us a profound sense of the beauty and mystery of the universe. It is about this world but suggests something beyond it’ . Chatting together with Katie, we felt the studio space itself could be a ‘thin space’ – a place that brought about shifts in our perception – a space of awe and inspiration.

During the residency I began to explore the idea of capturing and creating thin spaces using light – something mentioned by the storytellers of things glimpsed often out of the corner of an eye. Photograms – incorporating found objects and materials into my images, is part of my photographic practice. Capturing the landscape on film,
I wrapped cellophane around my polaroid camera lens to fracture and diffuse the light. Developing my 35mm film by hand at the residency, I experimented with film soup (disrupting the development process and film surface), as a result patches of white light found their way onto my negatives. Sharing the studio space with Katie
and watching her textile practice at work, stray bit of material including fabric interfacing found their way into my film scanner and provided other opportunities to create and explore light. I began to test out ideas and explore images at the residency, using cyanotype printing and toning techniques – packets of matcha tea bought from the coop supermarket in Barmouth produced a beautiful pink/purple tone that seemed to capture the otherness of the landscape.

The residency was such a special time – the freedom to create and reflect away from the routine of daily life was such a gift. I will always remember my time there. Thank you Scarlett, Jake and Toby the cat, for making me so welcome. Thank you also Kaite King – it was such a pleasure to get to know you, have an opportunity to watch
your process and amazing textile creations grow in our studio space.

Back home from the residency I’m excited to creatively remember and revisit Mawddach in my darkroom using the negatives and to further explore the ideas inspired by my stay.

Jo Stapleton
website
instagram

Mawddach…
Out of love, respect and adoration I have shortened the residency to first name only, my Madonna, Beyonce, Britney.

I am indebted to Scarlett, Jake, Toby and my wonderful co-AIR Jo Stapleton for creating the space for such a productive, insightful and exploratory two weeks in Eyri national park.

I began my trip with a particular agenda; Go slow, play with texture in my textile practice and play with abstracting layers from a style of ‘almost touching / almost intimate’ between panelled layers to an
intersection and interweaving of layers.

I did all these things and more and spent my time reading and thinking about The Tain, the Mabinogion (which I can’t pronounce yet) and other local fairy and dragon lore. My highlight was a visit from Ffion Watkin Philips who came to tell Welsh stories at Barmouth Dragon Theatre with other local storytellers.

Understanding the cultural memory of fairy stories and recognising the way this also presses across the UK really meant a lot to me. My practice involves textiles but also animation and ritual based installations that move between nonsense and trying to link into a universal experience. Increasingly I have a desire to echo in more of UK’s pagan heritage. So to meet the fairies head-on in the local woodlands on my walks to
Arthog waterfall, to fantasise about dragons buried deep under wells under local mountains, and to look out at the estuary each day disappearing into the mist and the mountains, has been incredibly informative.

As slow practices go, my residency work is not yet finished but I expect it to be ready for my show Moon Witual which opens IMMINENTLY, (yelp) in London at Batsford Gallery on 21 March 2026 - 22 March 2026. 
The show especially features a question I have been toying with over the last 6 months in thinking about our planet’s Moon being something between a poetic mirror and an active Kali type force on our lives. It is a public
participatory performance piece that also includes an archive-image film called 18.6 Crash and new textile works made during my time at Mawddach.

Katie King
website
instagram

When I think about my time at Mawddach Residency it feels like some magical dream that's buried itself deep inside my mind that seems so incomprehensible that I begin to question whether it was in fact a dream. I do however have evidence of time passing in this surreal environment which feel like artefacts I must treat with white gloves and glass cabinets. 

This residency allowed me to spend 2 whole weeks uninterrupted to fully immerse myself in the tough winter climate of Wales and gather as many visual references I could find. Working a full time job can often make you lose the wood for the trees as a natural creative and push myself out of my comfort zone and gather plans and projects for the future was truly an experience I will be forever grateful to have. 

I sat on many soggy rocks with my charcoal stick and sketchbook, trying my best to capture the landscape unfolding around me. With the light changing every 5 minutes with the racing winter clouds, my retinas couldn’t take it all in, looking to the right, then to the left, back to the right, behind and repeat, giving myself whiplash in the rain trying to make sense of the scenes unravelling with each step. If this was a movie, I sure as hell was the director rapidly losing control of the gaffer. 

With such peace and quiet and an enormous sense of well being, my internal monologue seemed to be on its own journey, my body merely a vessel to carry my train of thought and my camera. Most of these thoughts have run amok within those welsh hills, maybe I dropped them in the waterfall, or in the tree where I found the skull of a sheep and saw the dance of 2 king fishers. Wherever those thoughts have ended up I am sure they will come back to me as I continue to process my time at Mawddach. 

Natasha Motaghi
instagram
website

It was after 11 p.m. when I arrived at Morfa Mawddach Station. The last hour of that seventeen-hour train journey, I sat with my eyes pressed close to the window, trying to look into the passing black. I saw only the waxing moon, moving slowly in and out of view, hanging low above an invisible sea.

The next morning was like unwrapping a gift, only the gift was a vast, expansive landscape, with wind and sun and clouds rolling over distant hills.

The next two weeks went by in a blur. I walked across the hills, felt rain and wind and cold, and ran down slippery slopes, afraid of an approaching storm. I made stacks and stacks of drawings, trying to find a way in.

It wasn’t until the last few days, when I went up the hill, that I felt a sense of calm.
Here were trees dancing in a slow choreography formed by a hundred years of salt and wind.
I sat myself down on the moss with big sheets of paper, and looked. I'd come down for lunch, and go up again in the afternoon, spending days drawing the same trees.
While I feel most at home in my practice when it is less about observation and more about memory, I found it helpful to make these sustained drawings of the dancing trees. They taught me that drawing is a form of attention: by unhurrying myself and spending time in the landscape, I heard crows, felt the wind, and noticed the flies on whose home I was sitting.
I’ve found that these memories of journey and place will often move into drawings of their own; drawings about how wet my feet were, or the family of crows above me.
The residency helped me understand that I seem to want to describe the breadth of the landscape and my memory of it, and that making longer drawings is a helpful part of that process.

I left with a stack of drawings, a full heart, and a long list of haphazard memories that I’m sure will find their way to paper some day.
Thank you Mawddach, Jake, Scarlett, soft moths, curly oaks, and much loved Toby.

Maria Fraaije
website
instagram

 
Magic is something I’m still trying to understand. I believe it’s as old as time and exists objectively, seeping through—into the mind, into certain places, into feelings, objects, interactions. As children, we live alongside it more. As adults, we have to choose to believe it’s still there.
The Mawddach estuary feels like a place where that veil is thin. Walking through the woodland, it feels like you’re beside it for a moment, or brushing against it. Sometimes it’s just a smell in the air, or something caught in the morning light.

I arrived at night, and the next morning saw the land in full autumn from my window. I felt excited for the first time in a while—the kind of excitement you feel as a child. The landscape left me speechless—something I won’t forget. My sense of wonder was stirred and it felt like seeing the world after a long absence.
Walking shaped my days. Time warped… an hour felt like a minute, four hours felt normal. I’d find pockets of light that felt like early morning or twilight in the middle of the day, frosty and soft. The estuary itself was so dramatic and constantly changing, a living thing I sat with each day from my studio window. It felt wise, full of stories, like the mountains around it.

A ladder leaning against a mossy stone wall, like an invitation into another world. Pulling wool from fences and pylons, stuffing my pockets with it. Cutting my fingers on brambles. Jumping streams and falling in. Half skipping, half walking. Singing myself down a mountainside after getting lost. Stumbling upon old relics—ruins, remains. Old stories and new ones. Songs. Sunlight bending strangely. Moss, beautiful moss. The simple act of making sandwiches for hikes, looking after myself. Life drawing, portraits, laughter. Strange sheep in ancient woods. Everything turning golden in the late afternoon. Inspiration coming out of my ears. Everything was quietly buzzing.

I found myself in a rare, self-contained calm where childlike excitement and inspiration were uninterrupted. I could follow ideas in my head and on paper, experiment, play. It felt like an intangible space that rarely exists in adult life. I keep wondering whether it’s possible to live there forever, or whether it’s somewhere, like magic, you stumble into and remember that it exists.

Miranda Collis
instagram
website

This was my first artist residency, and my plan was to immerse myself in the land, celebrating the majesty and sacred aspects of nature. I was extra lucky to be going with my daughter Elsa, a recently-graduated artist who also responds to nature in her work.
 
Arriving at this most beautiful and welcoming of places, we spent a few days in wondrous disbelief: how could this magical space be just for us? I could have spent hours watching light move on the mountains and heron glide across the estuary. I found myself a favourite sit spot, where sea, mountains and oak woods all convened, and this is where I returned to when I needed guidance or grounding.

I began mapping my walks into a concertina sketch book, a project I’d had in mind for years. I loved the process of reflecting on each journey I'd taken, remembering the shapes I’d carved into the land with my footsteps. I became drawn to making simple map shapes that appeared to move on the page like figures dancing. My text became more minimal, and had different focuses (I mapped a walk with an old friend using our conversation topics, a walk with fatigue recorded the symptoms I was noticing). My maps help me remember the feeling of connection with - and belonging to - the land.
 
Being witnessed and recorded by artists when I modelled for the Draw portrait session was another profound experience. I wanted my pose to embody themes of autumn, which was happening in the external world, and inside my body as menopause. Learning to rest properly has been crucial for my health, with autumn teaching me to slow down and let go. This opportunity was like a performance piece where I could express my feelings about autumnal rest by lying on the studio floor, oak leaves scattered around me.
 
Meanwhile the stimulation of all this excitement and beauty, art and inspiration was becoming quite intense. There was no pressure to produce work, but I wanted to honour the spirit of the place, respond to my ideas and make meaningful work - a potentially overwhelming combination! I attempted to ground myself with barefoot walks on slippery river stones, and towards the end of the second week, I took to my bed for a day.
 
The next morning, still wobbly, I laid long sheets of rice paper, feathers, sticks and pots of ink on the studio windowsill and drew the birds I'd been watching and hearing all fortnight. It was as if the attention I had paid them had soaked me in their essence, and the images just flew out. It was very special to find that flow state during my last few days.

Elsa and I were the first parent/child artist pair at Mawddach, and were aware of how precious this experience was for our relationship, as well as our artistic development. We were open to collaboration, and while we did draw each other and make shared drawings (playing walk, stop!, draw, swap!), our true partnership was in the way we interacted. Halfway through, we held a crit using a model Elsa learned at uni - I’d never had my work looked at so deeply before, and it was powerful to hear her thoughts and feelings. Before the residency, I’d been concerned about getting pulled into ‘mother mode’, but what I hadn’t anticipated is that Elsa could mother me when needed, that mothering is an act of love not confined to parents! Perhaps because uniquely we were together as artists, we found new ways to support each other practically and emotionally as well as creatively.
 
I will be forever grateful to Scarlett and Jake for giving us this incredible, generous opportunity. Returning home was a little unsettling, like I had left part of myself in Mawddach. For two weeks, we lived in a beautiful universe where art and kindness were the most important things, and now I need to find a way to keep them alive in this world too.

 
M oss, moon, magpie, mud. Mushrooms, mountains, marsh. Mother, model. Magical, mystical.
 
A rtists, Arthog, autumn.
 
W aterfalls, woods, wildness, wonder. Wren, weather, wind, water. Walking.
 
D unnock, drawing, daughter.
 
D raw, dinner, diolch!
 
A corns, apples, art, awareness.
 
C ymru, community, Cadair Idris. Clock chimes, crow calls. Chaffinch, colours, creative, CAT.
 
H eron, holly, hawthorn. Hospitality, homely, heaven, heart.
 
Charlotte Semlyen
instagram
website

Some thoughts from my journal, kept every day during my residency at Mawddach:
The mountains here have a vastness and stillness that make my mind feel slower, more meditative without trying.
I have never been somewhere where my creativity has felt so held, so important, so needed. It is almost overwhelming.
Being creative feels so life-enforcing; it feels like I am making the most of my individual experience on this Earth.
Being an artist alongside my mum is so life-enforcing, in the most literal and spiritual ways.
Being around creative people is so creatively vital.
Seeing the roots of how a creative community has been nurtured has inspired me to question how I might help art communities grow. It has shown me how beautifully expansive these roots can become - touching and shaping so many lives.
Scarlett and Jake have created a life where community is at the heart of everything. Their creative practices are so deeply inspiring, but equally inspiring is their drive to use art as a means of social good.
I’m breathing especially deeply here, so that after this I may be able to reconnect with how this feels: being grounded in awe, nature, love, simplicity, and the now.
When I draw a leaf, my eyes can tune in to the beauty and intricacy of each leaf that day. When I make art with nature every day, it becomes a way of seeing.
Leaving the house with just a sketchbook and pencils is the most freeing feeling.
Art is so enjoyable when it is going well. More than enjoyable — it feels like the most important thing on Earth. But when it is not going to plan, I feel an all-encompassing stress, a tension I hold in my body and mind.
When I make something I like, the excitement is not just in that work, but in the potential for a whole body of work to evolve from that piece — a glimpse into an unknown but energetic potential that lies ahead.
How can my experience of Mawddach reverberate into my life afterwards?
I am learning to proudly identify myself as an artist.
I am living the lifestyle of an artist — with my eyes wide open to the intricacies of beauty that surround me, and a head learning never to belittle the power of this.

Elsa Greenland
instagram