Mental health and the countryside.

The last couple of weeks have been big!

One of my favourite pieces (and by far the biggest painting I’ve ever done) is on display at Honesburie shooting school in Warwickshire, one of the UK’s leading shooting schools. This has been something I’ve wanted to achieve for a long time now, and it’s been pretty incredible to see it happen.

The countryside has always been a huge inspiration to me. A place of stillness and simplicity, somewhere I’ve always gravitated back to. And maybe that’s why this piece is so important to me because it feels like having stillness and nature inside a home.

This process opened my eyes to some recent statistics about mental health in the countryside. A survey by the Farm Safety Foundation revealed that 92% of farmers under 40 believe poor mental health is the biggest hidden problem they face which is up from 82% in 2018.

Given that 50% of the population lives in rural areas, it feels even more important to be raising these conversations in the countryside. The UK is an interesting country when it comes to talking about our emotions, the “stiff upper lip” mentality is so ingrained in our lineage that it’s a difficult thing to change. In so many traditionally British households, feeling emotions is still seen as a weakness and therapy isn’t even something they consider. It’s better to get on it with it than to unravel it.

But as we all know; traumas catch up with us at some point and are impossible to run from.

I want to start opening up the conversation around mental health in the countryside and, in particular, for farmers. If you have any experience or thoughts about this, I’d really love to hear from you in the comments section.

Thanks for reading!

You can find out more about me on my website and on Instagram (where I share a lot of my art, motivation, and inspiration).