Heather Close (b. 1976) is a self-taught artist born and now based in Scotland. A keen artist as a child, she worked in engineering and project management for many years as an adult. In 2019 she moved back to the SW Scotland where she manages a farm with her father. Having not brought up on a farm – her father bought the farm once he retired – and spending much of her adult life in cities, the transition to regenerative farming, with the close observation of nature required, was a very different, but delightful turn and influences much of her painting. She returned to painting in 2024, and her paintings are expressions of deep love, affection, observation and connection with the subject. Close is frequently inspired by the plants around her as she walks through the fields through the seasons. These plants are often not the prettiest, as judged through the standard human gaze, but they are so important. These unsung heroes communicate amongst themselves and with the microbes in the soil to produce a diverse and healthy pasture, the living, breathing skin of the earth. She uses layers of gesso, ink, charcoal, water-based pencil and acrylic paint to scratch, scrape, form and paint an image. These are often abstract as she finds this captures a better sense of the full character of the plant more completely than a representional image. Markmaking is used to locate the painting in time by capturing seasonal birdsong, wildlife and insect characteristics.