When I’m walking and photographing in the landscape - I mean really feeling it and truly looking, rather than perhaps simply documenting it - I begin to see it as a surface to be felt and remembered.

In 1990, a few months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I was travelling through Poland with my Canon F-1. The camera had a removable top shoe with a plate-glass viewfinder, which allowed me to photograph scenes discreetly.

I make paintings, drawings, photographs and books from a simple daily practice, most often a walk in the South Downs near my home in Lewes.

This essay began as a talk I gave recently in my home town of Lewes titled Creativity, Community & Me. It was the first time I’d spoken publicly about my own creative journey - one that has taken me from self-doubt and detours to the relief of finally accepting something I wish I’d known, or had the wisdom to believe, at the age of seven:

After 21 years of trying, I completed my novel, The Many Truths of Josef Batten.