Embracing the landscape and walks as Old Friends
‘The nature of the self can only be understood through walking’
Andrews, Kerri. Wanderers, A History of Women Walking. 2020, Reaktion Books Ltd.
About the project
During July-August 2023, visual artist Carys Wilson, walked the South West Coast Path for eight weeks as a solo walk. Along the route she made artworks, wrote a daily journal, and collected visual and experiential information to make a new body of work in response to the walk. During the walk, Carys met with eight other female practitioners to whom walking also means a lot in their daily lives. Meeting with one practitioner per week, and walking for a day with each, recording conversations and thoughts about their individual daily walking practices on a dictaphone, provided an additional perspective.
Carys left her home in Penzance on Wednesday 5th July and walked along the south coast to Poole in Dorset, crossing inland to Minehead and back along the north coast to Penzance, returning home on Saturday 2nd September. It was important for Carys that she traveled by foot and carried her maps, art equipment, mobile phone and dictaphone only – an enforced break from the world of ubiquitous social media. Walking approx. 20 miles each day, and already an experienced and fit walker, she wanted to know how walking long distances daily, for an extended period of time, with an enforced sense of simplicity, would impact her as a visual artist.
One of the outcomes from Carys’ walk was the exhibition, Walking Women.
Walking Women Exhibition
‘Walking Women’ is a visual conversation between nine female artists brought together by a collective love of walking in Devon and Cornwall. Walking is either part of their creative practice, or an element of their daily lives that strongly influences their work. For some, an early morning pre-studio stomp, or an amble to work, facilitates how or what they draw in the studio. For others, a swift pedestrian workout, or an all day hike with a sketchbook, camera or notepad, creates a sense of immersion in the landscape that is then communicated visually or through words. Walks that are new challenges. Walks that are like old friends. Walks that feel like home.
by Billie Ireland
What links us together as female practitioners
For some of these nine artists, their practice focuses on the actual motion of walking and the inspiration for imagery comes from an internal focus, reflecting upon the physical and mental stamina needed to walk longer, more sustained distances. Other artists have focused on shorter, daily constitutional walks, where the external has initiated a creative response: the surrounding undergrowth, footpaths, coastline or historical buildings often left as part of the landscape. Others have reflected upon their daily walking practice through pigments, materials, touch, memories, history, stories or myths.
An eight week project that has been ongoing for years, and continues to do so
This ‘Walking Women’ conversation grew from an attempt by painter and draughtswoman Carys Wilson to walk The South West Coast Path in its entirety in the summer of 2023. She wanted to explore how walking for eight consecutive weeks would impact her visual practice, visually research how she could document her walks in a different way and record her own specifically female response to walking the land she inhabits. Repetitive movements of muscles, arms swinging, legs cycling forward, steady breathing, challenges on the up hills and downs: physical movement of walking and breathing enters into Carys’ work through the marks and gestures she makes on the surfaces of her paintings.
The need to have a heightened sense of awareness of safety as a female solo walker also directs the marks and colours she chooses to use. This opened up a dialogue with eight other female artists, reflecting upon how walking is elemental in their own visual or written practices. All artists involved either live in the Southwest or have strong links to the peninsula, and all met up to walk with Carys at some point during her walk, to share their thoughts about their practice and how walking, daily, influences their work and lives.
Walking Women on Tour
Walking Women was presented at Falmouth Gallery in early 2024.
If you know of a gallery or space that would be ideal as a venue for the Walking Women exhibition please get in contact with Carys Wilson: carysellawilson@hotmail.com
Guest Blog written by Carys Wilson
Participating Artists in Walking Women – follow them on Instagram to see more of their work.
Carys Wilson: @caryswilsonstudio
Cathy Turner: @sometimes_walking
Zoe Hyde: @zoehydeartist
Alice Robinson Carter: @alice.robinsoncarter
Gabrielle Teaney: @gabrielle.teaney
Karen Howse: @karen_howse_artist
Billie Ireland: @billieirelandart
Viv Spencer: @therealvivspencer
Charlotte Pulfer: @charleypulfer
The South West Coast Path 