Exciting times! My Field Trip box is the inspiration for a major part of the Field Studies project. The idea is that participants have their own Field Trip box, to fill how they like. These will then be shown in the exhibition, displaying a creative geology of Northern Scotland. Members of the Timespan organisation - the Board, Committee members, staff and volunteers - and various communities that we have been working with, are seen collecting their boxes.

So just as Peach went out 'in the field', I did. Recording by drawing, notes and collecting stones. All the work then came together in this little field trip box I made. It then became my proposal for my project, 'Field Studies'. It consists of 20 pages, which include research and how I want to conduct the project. This little box has now been shown to many people and has prompted lots of great discussions - amazing what a bit of cardboard and masking tape can do.

The trip to this hotel in Assynt just had to be done. Through my research the geologists Peach and Horne had become very important to me, particularly Peach who worked in a very similar manner to an artist. There is a very famous photo of them sitting outside this hotel, whilst doing their ground breaking research of the area.

Journeying is central to my practice, making maps of those travels, and I avivdly collect old maps and travel guides. In Blacks 1910 Guide Book of Scotland it has tips for 'Autobilism' i.e. driving cars, and advises "that it is when touring in the extreme north that the necessity chiefly exists for timing ones supplies." As the photo shows, 100 years later the situation is very similar. In journeying around 'the extreme north' it has taken me time to adjust to this 'timing', it is one of the things that makes here so very special.

You may have noticed that all my images have rocks in them, and that is where my research has taken me, to what is under our feet, the geologists Peach and Horne have been my inspiration. As was this, what was being exposed on a dig on Orkney - fasincating what is below us, hidden, but influencing that lie of the land.

As Jean shows me it's all about understanding the lie of the land, knowing how to 'read' the stones. To me a pile of rocks, but actually they signify something far more important. It's all a case of knowing what you 'see' - very similar to contemporary art. Rocks keep cropping up in my research....

I have been exploring the stunning, if slightly windy, landscape of Sutherland; and enjoying the delights of Lottie Glob's work.