Scottish Landscape Awards 2025
My image Potato Furrows has been awarded a Highly Commended in the Scottish Landscape Awards 2025, organised by the Scottish Arts Trust.
The photograph was selected by a panel of judges from more than a thousand entries submitted by artists across Scotland working in painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, film and installation.
Potato Furrows – Digital photographic print on aluminium dibond / Framed / 54 x 75 cm.
Potato Furrows is part of my ongoing project What Lies Beneath, which explores how land is used, perceived, and valued through paired ground-level and aerial photographs. This particular image was taken from directly overhead using a drone, revealing the deep furrow patterns cut into the earth by agricultural machinery — a sculptural landscape shaped by efficiency, repetition, and control.
What I find compelling about this image — and others like it — is how it challenges our traditional notions of beauty in the landscape. From the ground, it’s an ordinary field. From above, it becomes something else entirely: abstract, textural, almost meditative. But beneath the visual appeal lies a set of more complex questions about how the land is used, and at what cost.
To receive recognition for this work — particularly from a multidisciplinary landscape award that includes so many talented artists working across different media — is hugely encouraging. It strengthens my commitment to continuing the project, deepening my engagement with landscape through both creative and ecological lenses.
Thanks to the Scottish Arts Trust and the judging panel for this honour — and congratulations to all the other shortlisted and commended artists.