LANDED – COMPTON BAY CAN YOU HEAR US? 2026

Landed was a large-scale, community-led paper installation at Compton Bay on the Isle of Wight, commissioned by Isle of Wight National Landscape and Creative Island as part of CAN YOU HEAR US?, a six-week celebration of creativity and culture across the Island.

Funded by Arts Council England's Place Partnership Fund and DEFRA, the project brought together my own experimental painting practice with collaborative workshops involving children, young people, families and visitors to the Isle of Wight.

This commission gave me the opportunity to look closely at Compton Bay and explore the landscape through my artistic practice, discovering its colours, textures, natural materials and the small details that are so easily overlooked.

I became particularly interested in the marks and traces held within the landscape, from fossils and the organisms that created them to the rocks, cliffs and layers of sediment built up over time. These natural processes inspired me to think about the relationship between my own physical mark-making and the marks left behind within the landscape.

Using my hands, fingertips, knees and elbows, I pressed and smeared paint across paper surfaces, leaving physical traces of myself within the work. I experimented with rolling stones collected from Compton across painted surfaces and creating natural pigments by grinding down small pieces of fallen cliff material, bringing elements of the landscape directly into the paintings.

Alongside developing my own work, I wanted to invite others to explore Compton through creativity and discover how differently we might all respond to the same place.

Through a series of workshops across the Island, I worked with children, young people, families and visitors, exploring colour, texture and abstract mark-making using natural paints, clays, stones, feathers, seaweed and other found materials from Compton Bay.

Play and experimentation were central to these activities, encouraging participants to explore materials freely and develop their own responses without a right or wrong way to create.

One of the things I enjoyed most was seeing how differently everyone responded. Even when working with the same materials and inspiration, no two paintings were alike. Each person noticed something different, experimented in their own way and brought their own experience to the work.

All of these individual paintings came together alongside my own work to form a large-scale paper installation, displayed within the landscape that inspired them.

The installation brought together hundreds of individual marks, gestures and responses, creating a collective artwork that explored our different connections to Compton Bay.

Each painting held its own story and belonged to the person who created it, but together they became part of something much larger.

Visitors were also invited to take part during the installation weekends, experimenting with the materials and adding their own paintings directly to the artwork. Rather than remaining fixed, the installation continued to change and grow with each new contribution, reflecting the ever-changing, layered landscape of Compton itself.

For me, Landed brought together different aspects of my practice, from physical mark-making and experimentation with materials to creating opportunities for others to explore and express themselves through art.

The finished installation became a collection of marks and traces: those held within Compton's landscape over time, those created through my own painting process and those left by everyone who took part.

A huge thank you to everyone who contributed artwork and helped bring Landed together, including young people from the Isle of Wight National Landscape Youth Panel, Isle of Wight Youth Trust, Network Ryde and Independent Arts, alongside all the children, young people and families who participated in workshops at the Isle of Wight Biosphere Festival, Quay Arts and Calbourne Water Mill.

Thank you also to Isle of Wight National Landscape, Creative Island and the National Trust for their support in making this project possible.

Photos by Maria Bell.