To my favorite flower, the thistle.
To my favorite town, Inverness.
To Jacob, the wanderer.
To Alistair’s carnivorous plant.
To the ever-welcoming Keith.
To my family’s memorials in Portsoy.

This series was born from my travels to Scotland between 2019 and 2020—a journey to uncover the graves of my ancestors: the Watsons and McIntyres. I was continuing a path that my aunt and Grandma had left unfinished during their last visit to Scotland in the 80´s.

The journey began in London, where I salvaged wooden lids from Argentine wine boxes in a restaurant basement. I received my first gouges from an artist friend, and was gifted sepia and brown inks along with brushes. It was then that I began working with wood for the first time in my life.

I set off, contemplating roses and thistles, and wandering through ancient castles along the eastern shores. It was while trekking through Cairn that I felt an unexpected and profound sense of belonging. I called my siblings to share the feeling. Three years later, when I finally shared the details of the trip with my aunt who had guided me, I would discover that I had been walking on the ancestral land of our great-great-grandfather Watson.

The city of Inverness won me over. I stumbled upon a poetry reading in a small blue café, where I met Keith, who introduced me to his wife, Mary—a Gaelic specialist and poet. On the first morning I arrived at their home, I went for a walk to the shore but never made it. I was drawn instead to the textures of fallen bark along the roadside near the forest. I gathered beautiful pieces and brought them back to their shed. That night, I constructed The Barking Flower, a sculpture made of bark that, quite fittingly, also seemed to be barking. By morning, Keith and Mary had planted it alongside their roses. Over the following days, we watched it slowly return to the soil.

The journey continued under Keith’s thoughtful guidance—through the Highlands and across the Isle of Skye, listening to the whispers of rivers and fairies in the woods, spending evenings with whisky and fiddle music, and eventually riding all the way to Portsoy, where the graveyards were.

As I bid farewell to this beloved land, I unexpectedly fell in love—with a heartwarming man whose carnivorous plant blossomed for me on the morning I finally said goodbye. And so, from bark to flower to soil, I completed my dream of finding their graveyards, walking their land, and giving my ancestors their own return home.

 —Mx Watson