|
I feel like I should explain why we applied for this residency first before telling you about our time there together. Freddie is 6 years old and Autistic with limited verbal capabilities and delayed global learning development. He uses echolalia, which is a form of mimicking linguistic scripts from things he loves (namely the TV show Hey Duggee) to communicate his needs and feelings. He began going to mainstream school in 2024 and since then we have been in a daily battle with the local authorities and educational government to get him the assistance he needs. He was often ostracised from the classroom and deemed ‘incapable’ of joining in. I waded through multiple frustrating meetings , phonecalls and a mountain of red tape paperwork to keep fighting for Freddie to be seen for his strengths and not his weaknesses. Freddie was sent home from school more often than not, so I involved him in my work and art practice on a daily basis. We used art as a way to regulate, communicate and express ourselves. I noticed that Freddie was suddenly making a lot more progress with his communication and having a lot less meltdowns the more I involved him into my art practice. Through our art sessions we were able to evolve his language in ways that the school language therapist had deemed unfavourable. He learned his colours and shapes. He learned his numbers and how to write them. He loves the sensory aspect of creating art together. As time went on I thought I was going to end up having to fully home-school Freddie (and we were just about to take the local authority to court to have the right to do so). Therefore I applied for this residency, (it is such a rarity to find a residency that is parent and child friendly) in hopes that we could have some time away together to connect, build some core memories exploring the natural surroundings and having dedicated time to work on art work together. That brings us to the residency itself! We arrived in the evening of January 9th (the day before my 43rd Birthday) with my husband Stephen also in tow to help us settle in. It was too dark to see much of the estuary but the sky was blistered with stars as we turned the path and parked outside of the residency building which was festooned with lights. We were kindly greeted by Scarlet and Jake, then helped to settle into the accommodation on the 3rd floor. We had a wonderful time sharing stories and eating a home prepared welcome meal with them that evening. On my birthday we awoke to the sheer majesty of the estuary. Incredible pillowy clouds filled the sky reflected in the water below. We could hear the sheep baaing as they chewed grass on the hill behind the house and we were visited by blue tits, jays and robins on the windowsill of the kitchen bird feeder. It truly felt like we had stepped into a Studio Ghibli film. We took the day to explore the area a little and get some birthday treats. I absolutely love bridges and had to drive across the rickety wooden pallet bridge from Penmaenpool over the estuary to Barmouth. We finished off the day with fish and chips whilst watching the sunset over the sea. On the third day we said “Goodbye!” to my husband and decided to settle into a rhythm as a twosome. We quickly found that getting up around 5:30am in the pitch black dead of winter and shuffling into the living room with a cup of coffee to read under a blanket was a great way to start the day. By 7am we were in the studio beginning to set out some materials and ideas for our art practice while the sun arose. At 10am we would pack some snacks and pick somewhere to go for a big hike. Once we walked over the railway bridge to Barmouth. Most of the time we enjoyed going to Coed-Y-Brenin in the Snowdonia National Forest and picked one of the pre-designated hiking routes from the map to try. I became a little obsessed with the moss in those woods. The smell and the spongy texture of the moss was so delightful. We also loved to throw pinecones into the mini waterfalls laced around the river pathways and race them to the bottom. After each hike Freddie said “Time for cake!” As he got used to the fact that we would be famished and ready to find a bakery to raid. We often ended up in Dolgellau on the way back to the residency for pasties and sausage rolls. After our hike we would head back to the studio full of fresh air and pasties and ready to sit down and have some quiet time with our art materials.
Freddie had his own desk in the studio and worked away on his artwork. Sometimes making models out of play doh, sometimes using paints and water colour pencils. On one of the first nights that we were there we heard an owl out in the trees. Then I found a book of Owl photographs and it instantly became the subject theme for us. I had brought some willow sticks with us and some lantern building papers, so I set to work drawing owls and creating an owl pattern to make a giant lantern from. Freddie drew the most incredible Owl which I had to get tattooed on my arm as soon as we returned home. As the residency progressed and I was able to concentrate on just exploring and creating artwork with Freddie, his communication and language started to show signs of improving. He has so much capability yet struggles to get the correct words to the surface and with creative intervention, we’ve proved that he is able to express himself given the space and time to do so. In the second week of the residency we were joined by my writer friend Ali for 2 days and later my sister Sophie for 2 days. This was not only great to explore and share the experience with an additional person but this sometimes gave me a little respite as Freddie needs 24/7 supervision as he is unaware of dangers and difficulties. Halfway through the residency I was invited to sit for the Draw online portrait drawing session as a model. Jake kindly asked me a few questions about my artistic practice and how I approach my work. Then I had to do one of the hardest things ever, which is to SIT STILL! Luckily, I was able to sew in the first session and the incredibly talented artists who tuned in to draw me created some phenomenal works, so unique and expressive with each of their approaches, I was really honoured to have been able to sit for them as a subject. Towards the last few days of the residency I became a little emotional about leaving. I felt like I had wholeheartedly found a rhythm and space that accepted myself and my kid in a way that I hadn’t before. The accommodation was beautiful and I was truly going to miss watching the sunlight rise and dim each day over the estuary, mountains and sea giving way to vast night skies. Myself and Freddie have learned so much from this concerted time to concentrate on creativity and communication together in a way that we had not had the space or time to do so before. I’m taking so much of the rhythm and pace that I felt at the residency back to our daily life with us. We can’t thank Scarlett and Jake enough for being such great hosts (and incredible artists in their own right too). We will always have a little piece of Mawddach in our hearts. Sorrell Kerrison website
1 Comment
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 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  Long long ago, the sheep that roamed the Welsh hills were no ordinary beast. They were said to carry powerful magic in themselves and in their wool. They were old, wise and clever as the mountains, protectors and speakers of the land and trees, they stood by the oak forests for many years. Their wisdom kept the earth safe, their softness calmed storms, they warded off evil spirts for centuries and magic emulated from each fibre of their wool. Over the centuries, as the land was worked harder and harder, the sheep shorn again and again, more lambs taken to the slaughter, the magic thinned. Too much of their magic wool was repeatedly taken, too many hills burdened.. too many sheep ignored and used. The power in the flock started to fade, and so we have sheep as we know today- soft and silent, unexceptional some would say. But even now, some locals still tuck a tuft of wool into the shoe by their door before the first frost. Found on a fence or caught in a hedgerow, it’s said to guard both the land and the mind. It’s also a quiet nod to the old ways — to the threads of ancient magic that still linger in the hills * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  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 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 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  My time spent on the Mawddach was one of deep awe and inspiration. Largely spent in quiet, watchful, reflection I experienced creative flow like I never have before. I was welcomed by Scarlett on the first day and made to feel immediately comfortable and at home. Though I knew people who had also attended the residency, it felt completely my own unique experience and I appreciated the effort Scarlett and Jake go to in order to ensure everyone's time at the residency is personal and authentic. To engage with my proposal, which was to encounter 'the Beast'; face within myself and the landscape's present and historical embodiment of the wild, my days were spent walking, bird watching and swimming each morning with the rising tide. As I came to the residency wanting to reconnect with the writing and conceptual components of my practice, I lived by my pocket notebook and the calling of each and every magical place to uncover. Each evening using the studio to edit and transcribe, drawing based on findings of the day and enjoying invaluable discussions with Aurore, my fellow paired resident. I also managed to create a short film on my time there drawing from my own writing as well as local folklore and wider reading I carried out as preliminary and continuous study.  As this was my first residency experience, I didn't know entirely what to expect, definitely it is a space for very self directed artists, with Scarlett and Jake available to meet any needs one might have but largely as residents we operated as self contained. This was only a shame as Jake visited our studio on the last night and I am sure many more wonderful conversations could have been had! I am very grateful I decided to choose a paired residency, and very lucky to have landed with Aurore - and can only admire Scarlett and Jake's skill at choosing two people so well suited to spending two weeks working alongside each other with such synchronicity and shared inspiration!  For me the biggest draw, which went above and beyond expectations, was the Landscape - Mawddach Crescent is situated in the most rich and wildly exciting pocket of nature, and though I spent hours trekking further up the mountain or valley, the small patch of woodland directly behind the house and the quiet inlet on the estuary in front, was truly more than enough.
I am still physically and emotionally processing the amount of work I was able to achieve during my time at Mawddach and will be forever grateful to Scarlett, Jake and the wonderful Toby! As well as the land and sea, kingfishers and seals and the folklore seeping through the very essence of the place. Holly Bennett  As I made my journey to North Wales from London Euston I experienced the scenic views from the train in a dramatic storm and arrived already feeling deeply connected to the landscape. After spending a cute evening meeting Scarlett and my paired resident Holly (and how can I forget Toby) I just couldn’t wait to wake up in the magic the estuary has to offer. I’ll never forget waking up and pulling those curtains back and see the glorious view we got to immerse ourselves in everyday. Being connected to nature is so important to my art practice and living in London can make one feel deprived from it so arriving to the beautiful scenery was extremely stimulating and overwhelming. The area has so much to offer and all I wanted to do was explore and immerse myself in nature as much as possible. For the first week the weather was incredible and I just had to get out there with my sketchbook. I particularly enjoyed finding mushrooms and drawing/painting them as there were an abundance of them due to the mast year. With this residency I also wanted to experiment and play with my printmaking practice and use found objects to express what I’ve seen on my walks. I especially enjoyed finding beautiful stone slates that I printed with to represent the stone circle I saw on my walk up to Arthog waterfall. I also combined embossing and printing with leaves with my lino carvings which I’ve always wanted to experiment with. Being in a new space gave me that chance to feel playful and have fun. I’m also really into bird watching and because the weather was so beautiful I was spoilt with amazing bird activities and drew quite a few varieties that I will use as inspiration for future prints. I spent a lot of time reading and researching North Wales folklore and really enjoyed some of the beautiful books Scarlett and Jake had around. I can’t wait to combine the folklore and the birds I saw to create some exciting lino prints in the new year. After being there for two weeks I also finally got the courage to do my first ever landscape lino print. It’s something I’ve always wanted to explore but never felt it suited my style of printing so on the final day when we got hit by a storm I carved and printed a small landscape lino. Being paired up with Holly also added more magic to my stay. We found our worlds parallel in many ways and we had some similarities of interest in nature and folklore. It was a pleasure seeing both our spaces slowly growing each day from us collecting beautiful things to drawings unravelling from similar day trips exploring the beautiful Estuary.
After having a tough year with a strange diagnosis that stopped me from going out to draw and get inspiration, I knew I wanted to have a new experience and this residency gave me that and much more. The whole two weeks has enriched me with so many ideas but also all the drawings and walking has made me feel stronger and proud of how far I have come with my illness. I left in another rainy stormy day that felt like a symbolic full circle to my experience. Aurore Swithenbank website  ...click on/tap images for a larger view.. When I heard that I'd been accepted onto the Mawddach residency I was so excited. Being able to totally immerse myself in this beautiful Welsh landscape for two weeks was a dream! I'd never been to the west coast of Wales before and I had heard so many wonderful things. I was also at a point where I was hoping for some fresh inspiration for my painting process and I knew this was going to be the perfect catalyst. Scarlett & Jake very cleverly paired me with the lovely, talented sculptor, Arabella Brooke, and we had a similar focus, both of us wanting to make the most of this unique experience. I found co-working in the studio was valuable and inspiring. It was a privilege to have such a close insight into Arabella's working method. We shared delicious meals, swam in the estuary, talked art and posed for the Draw Brighton portrait session. All these experiences were really precious to me. September was also about experiencing the seasonal change from summer into autumn, colder mornings and unpredictable weather. We had thunderstorms like I’ve never seen, huge hail stones, and I awoke to mountains shrouded by mist, viewed from the cosy studio. I loved the dark ominous rain clouds moving in across the sea, beams of bright sunshine and the endless rainbows. It was such a treat to swim in the estuary under this immense sky surrounded by incredible mountains and hills. My paintings are about experiencing the landscape rather than visually depicting it, so walking and exploring the local area was important to me. I loved the walks to the waterfalls at Arthog, Cregannan Lakes and Blue Lake. Seeing the view from the other side of the estuary and discovering the neolithic burial chambers (Tal-y-bont) and Barmouth & Fairbourne’s blustery beaches, are all experiences etched in my memory and recorded in drawing. I made colour studies in my sketchbook and large charcoal drawings when working close to the estuary. I also had the time to take pieces of rolled canvas with me into the landscape, something that I've never done before. I worked on these with watersoluble materials, which, now that I am back in my studio, I see as a starting point for new work.  I intend to grow the work I started on the residency, a particular focus being the atmospheric skies. I loved seeing dark clouds on the horizon and bright sunshine over the hills, this combination gives the most incredible colour to the salt marsh and surrounding mountains. I'm excited to be having a solo show at the Jeannie Avent gallery, East Dulwich in March 2026 which will enable me to share some of this work with a wider audience. Claire Chandler website  ..click on/tap images for a larger view.. I am a bronze sculptor and much of my work on a day-to-day basis involves the long and technical process of producing the bronzes (building armatures, making molds, producing waxes, patinating the metal), as well as everything else that professional artists need to deal with these days (photographs, instagram, delivering work, marketing, exhibitions, etc.). I knew I needed to press a reset button when I realised I had started to talk about my work as a small business, rather than a process of artistic development, and being awarded this residency felt like a life-saver. I arrived at Mawddach, full of ideas about what the two weeks would hold. I planned to collect specimens of local materials and amass a ‘bank’ of textures and structures for future use in sculptural work; I was interested in the idea of inks and drawing materials collected from the estuary; and I wanted to push the idea of creating some sort of collated ‘portrait’ of the local landscape. I think I felt the need for a structured plan because as a figurative scuptor, I felt very under-qualified to respond to a scene as a ‘landscape artist’ might. I was absolutely entranced from the start by the estuary, the way it changes constantly with the tides and the shifting light during the day, and yet on the other hand it seems to have been completely unchanging for millenia. I was obsessed by the boulders strewn across the mountains, and the wind-shaped trees on the hills. I quickly ditched any pre-conceived notions about what I was here or, and just concentrated on observing the landscape and getting it down on paper, a massive shift away from trying to capture and catalogue the natural world, to just observing how it felt to be in it. Every morning, Claire and I would head out in separate directions after breakfast, and get back 7 hours later - I walked and noticed and walked and drew/painted and wrote masses of stream of consciousness words in rain-splashed sketchbooks, which I had to decode later in the studio. Mostly I just practiced paying attention. I stopped trying to conquer and control what I was drawing and concentrated on the experience of being in a space. I didn’t achieve anything on my original list, but the residency has been transformational in other ways. I learnt so much from talking to my fellow resident, Claire, but mostly I also just remembered how important it is to observe the world around you. Daily observational drawing, with the focus on feeling and experience as much as on factual accuracy, is now firmly back at the centre of my practice, and I am trying to allow the sculptural work to express some of the qualities of Mawddach as remembered from the sketches that I have papered all over one wall of the studio. Thank you so much, Jake and Scarlett, for the most amazing experience.
Arabella Brooke website |
