Roots!

This week’s word is roots, quiet, steadfast things that hold life together. You rarely see them, yet they do all the work, anchoring, feeding, connecting.

The word itself is ancient, from Old English rōt and Latin radix, which also gives us radical — literally “to go to the root.” I love that: to be radical isn’t to reject what came before, but to dig deep into origins, essence, and truth.

To be rooted is to belong. Or we might be uprooted and move from certainty to the unknown. Then we might go back to our roots. Roots anchor us and give us nourishment.

As I walk through Gosport, Dorset or Wiltshire, I feel the roots of history everywhere. Neolithic stones on windswept hills, the marks of the industrial age along old harbour walls, abandoned boats, traces of lives that shaped the landscape long before ours. These are roots too: cultural, ancestral, geological. They remind me that we grow from layers of time.

In my art and photography, I find myself exploring the visible and invisible threads that connect past and present. Brushstrokes echo the branching patterns of roots beneath the surface.

And then there are the personal roots — family, memory, the quiet pull of belonging. All feed the creative process.