every part of the Earthland is unique, whilst also being an integrated part of the whole. every place is sacred as is the connective whole.

Every place has its own particular landscape, its own smell, colour, sound, microclimate, multiple diverse beings and history. Its own evolved animate sentient presence, the presence of transmissions past and present - the communication of the very soul of place. It can only exist where it is.

it is clear that place is not just a piece of real estate. For those living in a place, there are always Earth Responsibilities and rites of reverence to be enacted even when these are denied and ignored for generations or even millennia. These responsibilities will remain and if they are not fulfilled and if modern humans continue in an unbalanced, conflicted and damaging relationship with nature, the Earthland will exact its full due in time. That is the natural long game of nature.

The place where I now live and work in the Eastern Marchlands of Scotland, as in many parts of the world, is now so altered and the wild nature so utterly diminished that it is mostly impossible to know anything about what was there before modern humans appropriated it, consumed it and left it in despair, remnants on the margins, incidental to human life.

These artworks are a taking of responsibility, of making a deep time connective relationship with the expanse of sentient presence of place. A taking of responsibility to reconnect and relearn deep respect for the more-than-human-world and the transcendent essence of place.

Everything in the nature world is deeply interconnected, nature is a deeply “connective” highly intelligent sentient ecosphere. This understanding underpins every aspect of these works.

As a whole these works are a body of “Initiatory Art”. Every Image-Story is part of a process of sequential ecological maturation.

It has become clear through the making of this art that Initiatory Art is only initiatory when it is deeply grounded in the earth and sentient presence of a particular place. When it is undertaken and embedded in the nature of a particular place, when it is of a particular place. It is only then available for authentic, ecological transmission, the streaming of its emergent ecological stories.

The maker of Initiatory Image Stories is an active contributing practitioner who perceives and experiences the connective world as the real world. A practitioner who can perform as an authentic psychic conduit and transmitter for a particular place. These image stories then become true earth oracles. They tell us the inherited connective story of that place and the ancient cross-generational wisdom embedded by those who practiced reverence and enacted their earth responsibilities. When this knowledge is imbibed and interpreted and made manifest it connects the present in the context of its ancient wisdom. It enables us to commune with the multiplicity of beings past and present embedded in place.

This is not just a human endeavour but a multi-species and multi-elemental process where teachers and initiators are to be found across all of nature. This is manifest and embedded in the full psycho-ecological presence of a particular unique place.

The making of Initiatory art demands that the whole process is contained within a particular “attuned state of consciousness”. This state of consciousness contains and processes all aspects of initiatory art. This includes the depth attuning with place, the production, transmission and dissemination of art works and the facilitation of initiatory journeys. In this way the artist and the works honour the Earthland and deliver ecological knowledge to their communities.

This attuned state of consciousness is governed by the developed ability to recognise, honour and connect with primal presence permeating the Earthland. To have a depth response to the animate, sentient personhood of the ecosphere we are all intimately entwined within. This consciousness must be held in the image-makers body and psyche even as a bulwark to the huge forces of the modern rational mind and its cultures that mostly criticizes and reject innate earth wisdom. This is the particular responsibility for all those who have a depth empathic relationship within the world of nature. We must make earth knowledge known when it is not understood or is denied by the modern human mind and its dualistic systems. This is our sacred duty.

These artworks are essentially best described as an interwoven body of initiatory experience. They provide pathways for the development of ecological consciousness in modern humans. They show the way to transform our modern singular human mind, with its dualistic relationship with nature and itself. They provide entry points into the multifaceted, ''Outerior'' mind of nature with its profound and expansive connective web of intelligence.

They are tools of initiatory transformation to aid in the reattunement of our modern disconnected human psyche, to reconnect us within the greater connective mind of our Earthland. This type of ecological art and its dissemination opens us to a psychic reconnect and helps us to heal our loss of earth values and reestablish our understanding of the sacredness of nature and ourselves as belonging to nature. MAKING THIS ART IS AN ACT OF LOVE.