Clive Brandon
My practice responds to the landscapes, architecture, spaces, and places I inhabit and explore, drawing upon my deep connection to the environment. Recent work focuses on the concept of the ‘constructed landscape,’ exploring how human intervention shapes and reshapes natural spaces.
Through an experimental and often improvised process, I use a diverse range of materials, including found objects like cardboard, scrap wood, and paper, combined with watercolour, charcoal, and newsprint. My pieces evoke both real and imagined landscapes, grounded in my surroundings yet speaking to broader questions about our relationship with nature. These works are informed by the Japanese aesthetic of wabi sabi, celebrating imperfection and impermanence, as well as ‘Casualist’ art influences, creating lo-fi pieces that embrace the beauty of the unfinished and the temporary.
Through my art, I invite viewers to consider the landscapes we inhabit—not only as physical spaces but as constructs shaped by human hands.
Lived Experience
I live on a smallholding on the Black Isle in the Scottish Highlands, where we have developed a permaculture-inspired forest garden and run two off-grid eco cabins. My time is divided between tending the gardens, running the accommodation and making work in my home studio.
Since relocating from the city to the Scottish Highlands in 2015, I have become increasingly attuned to the rhythms and changing conditions of the landscape around me. The seasons and ongoing changes in the land are part of everyday life and naturally feed into my work.
My experience of regenerative gardening has also influenced the way I think about landscape. Both gardening and making art involve close observation, recognising patterns and responding to change. Living and working in this way has deepened my awareness of the relationship between human activity and the natural environment, and of the wider ecological and climate changes affecting the landscapes around us.
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