Kevin Frediani, Co-Director, Art & Nature Collective
January 2026 – House of Dun, Montrose, Angus
Art has never been something I have practised in the formal sense, yet it has shaped my working life for decades. Through years spent alongside artists – supporting, facilitating, and witnessing their encounters with the living world – I have come to understand art not as an object or an outcome, but as a kind of time machine. It collapses distance. It binds the viewer to the artist, regardless of when the work was made or when it is encountered. And it reveals, with startling clarity, the moment in which material, imagination, and intention first met.
Art, in this sense, is not simply created; it comes into being through a dialogue between artist and medium. The medium, whether pigment, clay, wood, fibre, or the unruly “mess” of nature, has agency of its own. It pushes back, surprises, resists, collaborates. The artist’s gestures are never solitary. They are shaped by wind, grain, moisture, texture, decay, and the countless more‑than‑human forces that inhabit the world. What emerges is not a static artefact but a record of relationship: a trace of the encounter between human and material, intention and accident, presence and place.
When nature becomes the medium, this relationship deepens. The work is no longer merely about nature; it is with nature. The artist enters into a reciprocal exchange with the living world, and the resulting piece carries that entanglement forward. Viewers, in turn, do not simply look at such work – they feel it. They sense the weathering of bark, the weight of stone, the softness of moss, the slow patience of growth. Their bodies respond before their minds interpret. In that moment of sensual recognition, perception shifts, and the viewer becomes part of the same unfolding story.
This is the magic of being.
Anthropologist Tim Ingold speaks of the “track” or “trace” as the mark left by movement through the world – a way of knowing and inhabiting space. Art, especially when rooted in nature, functions in much the same way. It leaves marks on us. It waymarks our emotional landscapes. It helps us orient ourselves in relation to place, to others, and to the more‑than‑human world. These traces accumulate, shaping how we dwell, how we remember, and how we imagine.
Through the work of the Art & Nature Collective, I have seen how these traces can transform not only individuals but places themselves. A woodland clearing becomes a site of encounter. A shoreline becomes a canvas of tides and hands. A garden becomes a living archive of care. Through artistic engagement, spaces become places, imbued with emotion, memory, and meaning. They become part of our becoming, just as we become part of theirs.
A Deep Time Walk at Dun
The landscapes around the House of Dun offer a vivid example of how embodied knowledge emerges through sustained engagement with place. Walking through its glacial contours, raised beaches, and remnant woodlands, one begins to sense the depth of time held in the land. The path beneath the feet is not a simple trail but a palimpsest of histories:
stone shaped by ice,
lichen‑mapped boulders older than memory,
tree roots tracing centuries of growth,
animal tracks crossing human footprints,
grasses whispering the weather of generations.
As I walk these landscapes in my role as steward of this historic and cultural environment, the place reveals itself slowly. My stride adjusts to the slope. My breath synchronises with the rhythm of the land. My senses widen, hearing the distant burn, smelling resin, noticing the shift in light as clouds pass. This is not observation from a distance; it is correspondence, in Ingold’s sense, a mutual becoming between walker and world.
The landscape becomes a teacher.
The body becomes an instrument of memory.
Knowledge is not extracted but felt – in muscle, in balance, in breath.
In such moments, one does not simply move through deep time but moves with it. Each step becomes a conversation with the past. Each sensation becomes a thread connecting us to the more‑than‑human life around us. Through this reciprocal encounter, both person and place are transformed: the landscape becomes a lived and storied environment, and our understanding of what it means to be human is quietly re‑oriented by the experience of moving with, rather than merely through, the world.
Why This Matters for Our Collective
The Art & Nature Collective exists to nurture precisely these kinds of encounters, moments where art, nature, and human presence meet in ways that deepen understanding and belonging. Whether through collaborative making, shared walks, or reflective practice, our work helps cultivate the traces that shape how we inhabit the world.
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As we continue to grow as a community, I invite each of you to notice the marks that places leave on you, and the marks you leave in return. These exchanges – subtle, reciprocal, and often overlooked – are at the heart of the magic of being.
Further Reading
Abram, D. (1996) The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More‑Than‑Human World. Vintage Books.
Gell, A. (1998) Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford University Press.
Ingold, T. (2013) Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge.
Kohn, E. (2013) How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human. University of California Press.
Tuan, Y.-F. (1977) Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. University of Minnesota Press.