Andrew Atkins North Yorkshire, United Kingdom

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I'm principally a photography-based practitioner with subject matter that's rooted in nature. Whilst my skillset, developed over 20 -odd years, lies in photography, my creative instincts are much broader and, since going full-time, I'm increasingly exploring areas beyond the camera. A key aspect of this process is augmenting photographic works to tell stories and evoke emotions about nature.

Since becoming a full-time creative professional early in 2024, I made a discovery about myself. Despite a career mostly in marketing and design-led product development, which many would see as 'creative', I realised how constrained and formulaic my thought processes had become. Essentially, it was all about business goals. With time and headspace, I've quickly developed areas of my practice that had previously been only whispers that drifted through my mind occasionally. That's proved to be a liberating and continuing experience. Much of my photographic work is representational - a legacy of 20 years of serious application. They still have significant aesthetic value, and are produced as gallery prints. Even here, I increasingly use subtle compositing and texturing to add weight and depth to images. My newer works are increasingly explorations of how I can illustrate subjects from nature in ways that are more meaningful, especially to audiences that might not appreciate these subjects when seen in real life. Time seems to play a role, especially in my landscape work, where I'm very aware of the 'moment in time' I'm capturing and its potential future significance. I also find myself increasingly seeing my wildlife and floral portraits in the context of old book plates and C18th paintings. This is probably a response to the importance such subjects had at that time - a fascination with the natural world that seems blunted today. In works that are created exclusively through digital means, I think in terms of 'digital mixed media' as my technique. Such work might be built on an original photographic element, but include other elements like photographic fragments, original textures, and brushwork. Even where digital production is used in the process, 'analogue' elements from scanned objects to cyanotypes increasingly find a place in my compositions.