I am beginning to explore digital nature art as a way of reframing birds, landscapes and ecological recovery. My interest is not in using generative AI to imitate conventional wildlife art, but in asking what new visual iconographies might become possible when birding experience, geographical and ecological knowledge, visual imagination and generative AI tools are brought together.
This work grows from my long-standing interests in rewilding, the cultural meanings of wildlife, and transformational change. I am particularly interested in how birds, together with rewilding philosophy and science, can generate contemporary icons of place – images that connect ecological recovery with identity, memory, humour, hope and possibility. Generative tools offer a way to explore these visual possibilities, helping to reimagine birds and landscapes not only as bodies and scenery, but as living systems shaped by loss, return and renewal.
First project: Scottish bird iconographies
Inspired by travels in Scotland, and slightly bored with the familiar puffin, Highland cow and sheep motifs that adorn so much Scottish tourist paraphernalia, I began designing a series of T-shirt concepts exploring how birds might become lively, contemporary emblems of Scottish nature, culture and tourism.
The images were developed through an iterative process of prompting, visual review, correction and refinement. Generative AI provided the image-making tool, but the direction came from bird knowledge, landscape references, humour, composition and repeated judgement about what felt visually and culturally right. A key part of the process was finding connections between a bird’s behaviour or personality, a distinctively Scottish phrase, and a particular action, attitude or feelin project: Scottish bird iconographies