Clive studied Fine Art and is an artist, making paintings and collages inspired by landscapes, architecture, and maps. His work can be seen at Axisweb.org.
Julie has a degree in Environmental Science, and is interested in all aspects of ecological sustainability. Her many skills include gardening and growing, baking, brewing, cooking, food preserving, IT and admin, crafts such as knitting and crochet.
While always striving to live as ‘green’ a life as possible, we recognised the urgency to live in a more sustainable and regenerative way which reflects our values and addresses the need to mitigate and adapt to the broken systems which have resulted in the climate and ecological crisis. In 2013 we left the city and our jobs to travel, learn skills, discover new ways of living and find inspiration and direction on a pathway towards an ecologically balanced lifestyle which was healthy for us, society and the planet. We kept a blog about our trip, which combined artists residencies and WWOOFing in the U.K. and Scandinavia, and can be seen at this site. We stayed with many inspiring people and places, and learned a huge amount which shaped where and what we wanted to do next. We wanted to combine our mutual love of landscape, ecology, science, art and design, gardening and food as our lifestyle and livelehood.
We eventually found our new home on the Black Isle and have been working for the last few years to develop our garden and household, build a sustainable livelihood and create thriving habitats for people, plants, trees and animals . In 2017 we started Black Isle Permaculture & Arts (BIPA), an umbrella business for the poly-income generating activities which take place here. Recently our energies have gone into the many creative projects on site, such as building our off grid cabins and completing our design and vision for the house and gardens.
Get in touch by email: [email protected]