Creativity has always been part of life at The Warren. Alongside growing food, nurturing the land, and hosting guests in our eco cabins, we both enjoy making things by hand.
Whether creating artwork, sewing cushions, building furniture, preserving food, or crafting useful objects for everyday life, our work is rooted in sustainability, resourcefulness, and a close connection to place. We use natural, reclaimed, and locally sourced materials wherever possible, finding value and beauty in things that might otherwise be overlooked.
Many of the artworks, prints, textiles, and handmade items we create are now available through BIPA Studio (Black Isle Permaculture & Arts), our creative practice based here on the Black Isle.
BIPA Studio brings together Clive’s visual art and Julie’s handmade textiles, craft work, and practical making. From our forest garden homestead we create work shaped by a shared interest in landscape, environment, sustainability, beauty, and everyday usefulness.
You can explore our latest work in the BIPA Studio shop.
Clive Brandon Visual Artist
My work spans painting, collage, photography, book-making, and site-specific interventions. It explores the landscapes, architecture, and places I move through, drawing on a strong connection to the natural environment.
Lately, my work has focused on constructed landscapes—how human activity shapes and reshapes natural space. I use found materials like cardboard, scrap wood, and paper, combined with watercolour and charcoal to create layered, often improvised pieces.
About Clive’s Creative Practice
These works reflect influences from wabi-sabi aesthetics and Casualist art, celebrating imperfection and impermanence. I’m especially interested in how light and space shape the viewer’s experience, inviting slow observation, much like walking through a landscape or reading a map.
Since relocating to the Highlands in 2015, my practice has become more seasonal and site-specific. I now work in rhythm with the changing landscape, drawing on natural cycles and environmental themes—particularly in response to the climate and ecological crisis.
As a regenerative gardener, I explore connections between permaculture, site-specificity, and constructed landscapes. Both my gardening and artistic practices are rooted in observation, pattern recognition, and the mapping of natural cycles such as seasonal changes and landscape transformations. My work reflects these interconnected processes, with an emphasis on closed loops, circular systems, and sustainable practices.
Inspirations
My work draws inspiration from contemporary and historical artists and movements. This includes the Land Art and Minimalism of Robert Smithson and Ian Hamilton-Finlay and the Anarchitecture of Gordon Matta-Clark. I admire the surreal pastoral landscapes of Paul Nash, and the 1950s works of Joan Eardley and Francis Davison. I also find resonance in the practices of contemporaries such as David Lemm, Tony Swain, Helen O’Leary, and Louise Barrington.
Through my art, I invite viewers to consider the landscapes we inhabit, not only as physical spaces but as constructs shaped by human hands
You can view my work here
Axisweb axisweb.org/artist/clivebrandon
SSA www.s-s-a.org/our-members/clive-brandon/
VAS www.visualartsscotland.org/artist-biography/clive-brandon
Selected works are available as limited edition giclée prints through BIPA Studio, produced on demand using a carbon neutral process and available framed or unframed.
About Julie’s Crafts and Making
Julie studied Environmental Science and brings a practical, hands-on approach to sustainable living. Her wide-ranging skills include organic gardening, baking, brewing, cooking, food preserving, IT, and administration.
She particularly enjoys knitting, crochet, sewing, and textile work. Using reclaimed and upcycled fabrics wherever possible, she creates cushions, bags, household textiles, clothing, and other useful handmade items.
Her work combines practicality, comfort, creativity, and thoughtful design. Each piece reflects a belief that beautiful things can also be useful, durable, and made with care for people and planet.
Many of Julie’s handmade items are produced in small batches or made to order through BIPA Studio shop.
Making Together
Over the years we have collaborated on a wide range of creative and practical projects. These include building furniture, upcycling materials, creating artwork and textiles, designing features for the cabins, and working with timber from our own woodland.
The eco cabins themselves are perhaps our largest collaborative project, bringing together design, craftsmanship, creativity, and sustainable building techniques.
For us, making is not separate from how we live. It is part of a wider practice of stewardship, creativity, and living lightly on the land.
Explore BIPA Studio
Original artwork, limited edition prints, handmade textiles, bags, cushions and other creations inspired by life on the Black Isle.
