The Travelling Musician was inspired by my love of music and by the guitar neck that I found washed up on St Annes’ beach. This sparked my imagination and I began to question how it got there. Was the musician on a boat and it dropped into the sea? How far had it travelled? I developed the piece adding clarinet parts and bells whilst using a vintage writing slope top as the foundation to symbolise the songwriter and writing one’s own life story – one of love. The love for music that stretches across the globe, a language we all understand.

This piece received the Visitor Prize in the Art of Music exhibition at King Street Studios in Lancaster (13 – 26 October 2021) jointly curated by King Street Studios and the Lancaster Music Festival Board.

Images credit: Jill Reidy