FEATURING ARTIST, WRITER, PHOTOGRAPHER AND THINKER, GAEL HILLYARD

Artist, writer and thinker Gael Hillyard joins me to talk about her creative life, from painting, writing and photography, to the deep-winter months she spent as artist-in-residence on Fair Isle, to the ten silent days she lived inside a retreat with no conversation at all. We explore how her work has been shaped by a childhood spent in a Victorian atelier, the two studios she now keeps in the Highlands, and the weather-beaten coastlines she keeps returning to as both muse and anchor.

And in the mailbag this week, Spike Boydell, our man from the canoe down under, has been thinking about slowing down, and I mean really slowing down. Comedy-writer-in-chief Hegaard the Dane sends word about solitude and the small matter of spending a night or three in jail! John Kenny writes about trees and the Sycamore Gap, which has an unexpected local relevance for me this weekend, and Bill Frische has been photographing a ‘monster’.

I’ll also share a little more about the craft of photogravure that we’ll be exploring on the new Scottish retreat in June. There’s a reminder of this month’s assignment, the last one of the year, before we shift our focus to THE ONE in December.

Email your stories, thoughts, and pictures to the show. If you can optimize/resize photos to 2,500 pixels wide, that’s always much appreciated. If you’d like to support this show and have access to further content and the midweek Extra Mile show, we’d welcome you as an EXTRA MILER. There’s also our thriving Facebook group, a safe place to meet and talk with photographers of all interests, the Photowalk YouTube channel, plus the show is featured on Instagram, VERO and X.

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MORE ABOUT names, words, THE MUSIC and places FROM TODAY’S SHOW

A flâneur is someone who wanders the city not to get somewhere, but to see it — a curious stroller of urban life, eye open, camera or notebook in hand, absorbing the patterns of street, crowd and light.

Charles Baudelaire was a Paris-born poet, critic and art-observer from the mid-19th century who turned the streets and crowds of modern city life into poetry. He made places like Paris itself a subject of verse, speaking in voice both urbane and unsettled about beauty, decay and the moments in between.

Walter Benjamin was a German-Jewish philosopher and cultural critic whose work turned the street, the camera, and the pulse of modern cities into something worth serious thought. He wrote about art in the age of mechanical reproduction, about what happens when technology lets us see (and copy) more than ever, and he treated the everyday as full of history waiting to be noticed.

Wasps Studios is a Scotland-wide charity founded in 1977 that turns historic buildings into affordable studios for artists and makers, now supporting hundreds of creatives across nearly 20 sites from Shetland to the Borders.

Ada Lovelace was a 19th-century mathematician who worked with Charles Babbage and ended up writing what many now see as the first ever computer program, long before anything resembling a modern computer even existed.

The Sycamore Gap Tree stood in a dramatic dip beside Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland and became one of Britain’s most photographed trees. Then, in 2023, in a single night, it was cut down, widely described as an act of vandalism and cultural loss.

The Treedom show featuring woodland photographer Mali Davies.

The Shipping Forecast is that late-night BBC radio broadcast that reads out weather and sea conditions for the waters around the UK. It’s described now as a mix of poetry, precision and habit, listing places like Dogger, Fisher and Forties in a rhythm that soothed sailors, insomniacs and radio lovers for decades.

Spike Boydell’s YouTube channel.

Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian artist, inventor, and thinker whose work straddled science and art in a way few have matched. He painted The Last Supper and Mona Lisa, and sketched ideas for flying machines long before they were possible.

Kelvin Brown’s flickr Photowalk inspired group - join by invite by clicking on to THIS LINK.

MUSIC LINKS: March the Machine wrote today's playout song Run Alone. Music on the show is sourced primarily from Artlist and also features in Michael Brennan’s Spotify playlist GoFoto. For Apple Music users, follow this playlist.