Katherine is a communicator, conservationist and environmental artist, creating as The Walking Sketchbook.
As she Walks through nature, Katherine seeks moments to connect with it, exploring through her senses.
The natural world seeds her creative practice – blowing in on the wind, falling on to her page in raindrops, or as snowflakes, chasing ink across her sketchbook in a storm, or connecting a pen to the branch of a tree making its marks with the rhythm of the breeze.
Katherine relishes the process of creating with the elements and nature, feeling energised by the freedom and adventure.
Nature’s voice is the core to the art and narrative that emerges as The Walking Sketchbook connects with it, allowing it to tell its own story. As nature creates, leaving its mark on the page, Katherine helps us how to see it in a different way. She shows us how to look, how to listen as nature shares its story. You have to see or feel something, know that it exists and then through its own narrative, inspire protection and conservation.
Katherine will sit quietly beneath the canopy of an ancient woodland, or nestle into a rocky outcrop above sun-baked, wind-blown, maritime plants. She will wrap up and sit outdoors in minus temperatures to see if the fern frost wants to create with paint. Capturing the soundscape, the scents, the feel of the wind, the rain, the hail or the sun, The Walking Sketchbook, Katherine Owen, shows us all how to care about nature and to listen to what it needs us to know.
As Spring is emerging in the Northern Hemisphere each year, Katherine inspires artists to sketch outdoors in nature. In 2019 she founded Sketch Across the World a community of artists sketching together across all continents of the World. From the foothills of the Himalayas to Antarctica, the Yukon and the Island of Maui, this has been The Walking Sketchbooks biggest adventure of all.
Katherine works full time across the UK with a Conservation charity, growing 20 years of knowledge on amazing projects. She has led citizen scientists, mapping Ancient Trees from country lanes to far flung places, to restoring ancient woodlands and enhancing the landscape through agroforestry. Fortnightly Sketchbook Fridays planned in, allows focused creative time so she can head out of the door to create in nature.
Instagram: @thewalkingsketchbook
“As the light dances through the leaves of the trees, that’s where the magic is.”
Sketching at Cwmtydu West Wales.
Creating with the seaweed, pebbles and the sea.
Painting with light and heavy snowflakes as they fall.
Leaf print and fern-frost painting in minus temperatures.
Hawthorn tree high up on Hergest Ridge drawing in the breeze.