Although I’m now based in the Borders, I was born and raised in the shadow of Arthurs Seat, Edinburgh. I can trace my interest in art back to the early days in the city and I still have one of my abstract paintings I did when I was 3! Art has always been one of my special interests and another is archaeology. Despite my fascination for these subjects, I was unable to engage in the style of teaching at school, failing to get into art college and failing my crash-course History A-level (learning all about the Franco-Prussian war bored me to tears when all I wanted to do was get my hands in the dirt!). A last-minute meeting with a careers officer led me down the path of another interest, biological research, and much of my life was focussed on that particular field. However, my passion for art (specifically Celtic and Pictish) and my interest in archaeology have always filled a large amount of my spare time. From my early teens, I spent every holiday at our family caravan in Perthshire and it wasn’t long before I was asking my parents if they would drive me around to visit every single megalithic and Pictish site in the region. In addition, I discovered the George Bain books ‘Celtic Art: The Methods of Construction’ in a tiny art shop in Pitlochry and began to draw many of the designs in minute detail alongside photographing and documenting stones and carvings all around Perthshire and other parts of the country. During the time working in research, my Dad gave me an old rotary carving tool and I started to replicate traditional Pictish carvings on old roof slates. Back in 2013, I left full-time research to become a freelance editor and writer with a biology magazine (the main focus being microscopy, pun intended). Concurrently, I thought I’d try to sell one of my Celtic-knot carved cheeseboards, which I did, the very same day. I established my business soon after and, back then, I was also making log-stores, chicken coops and birdtables; hence the name ‘HatchBurnCarve’. My work soon began attracting attention with pieces such as ‘Stream of Knowledge’ which won the Peebles Sense of Place award in 2014. I am almost entirely self-taught, but have had private tuition and guidance from Simon Burns-Cox, the sculptor and letter carver based at the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop. My inspiration derives from a vast source including (mostly) archaeology, nature, landscape, the shapes and forms of natural stones, magick, symbolism, music, folklore, mythology…..I have more ideas than time!