Inspired by the Coast

Episode 4 explores how the environment on and around the Coast Path inspires artists and creatives. We had the absolute privilege of chatting with renowned contemporary artist Kurt Jackson; celebrated musician Peter Knight; and artist, writer, and fundraiser Emma Scattergood.

Each artist discusses their very personal relationship with the coastal landscape and how immersing themselves in its awe-inspiring beauty, provokes and inspires their artwork and music.

Kurt Jackson is a dedicated environmentalist and true polymath whose artistic practice ranges from his trademark visceral plein-air sessions to studio work and embraces an extensive range of materials and techniques including mixed media, large canvases, print-making and sculpture. Kurt and his wife Caroline live and work in the most-westerly town in Britain, St Just-in-Penwith where in 2015 they set up the Jackson Foundation. Jackson says that his ‘creativity, visual art and writing is often inspired, motivated and in response to the typography, biodiversity and changing seasonality of the coastal habitats’.

Peter Knight is a violinist who was 'discovered' by Ashley Hutchings, founder of the folk band Steeleye Span. He was invited to join the Band when they were just on the cusp of fame and spent 45 years touring the world with them, making several Gold Albums and appearing in their own BBC series. He left in 2013 to focus on the Gigspanner Trio and the Gigspanner Big Band, and most recently joined with The Salt Path author, Raynor Winn, on Saltlines – a collaboration of prose and music celebrating the South West Coast Path.

Emma Scattergood is a writer, artist and educator, specialising in community-facing projects. After many years as a journalist/author and then a university lecturer, her latest project is walking and drawing the SW Coast Path and sharing elements of that process in Creative Path workshops, encouraging intuitive, creative engagement with nature. When not on the Path or in her studio, Emma also works part-time on a community project for a writing development agency and as a lead trustee for The Story Works (a children’s charity she co-founded).