Plant Gazing: Exploring Botanical Consciousness Through Creative Practice

Held fortnightly, this four session online course invites you to view the plant world through multiple lenses including art, botany, animism, and philosophy. Together, we’ll observe the plants around us, both indoors and out, through drawing, painting, and writing.

Led by artist Joseph Walsh and hosted by IMT Gallery, each session includes meditations, creative exercises, and guided activities designed to open up new ways of seeing, sensing, and co-existing with nature.

Session 1: Sensing the Herb

We’ll begin the course by engaging in a practice used by herbalists to connect more intuitively with plants, through drawing, tasting, and attentive observation. This session sets the tone for a personal and sensory approach to plant study. Rather than relying on pre-existing knowledge, we’ll tune into the herb’s form, qualities, and effects using our senses, allowing an encounter with the plant as a living presence. We'll also look at how herbalists and artists have described plants, comparing their interpretations with our own. Between sessions, you'll be invited to repeat the exercise with a plant of your choosing, using drawing or writing to reflect on your experience in ways that feel natural and personal to you.

Session 2: Beyond the Human Gaze

This session invites you to step into the perspective of the non-human through a series of guided drawing and writing exercises. We’ll explore how language shapes our understanding of other beings, questioning anthropomorphic habits and experimenting with alternative ways of sensing and expressing plant consciousness. Drawing on animist perspectives—particularly from Native American and Amazonian cultures—we’ll consider how personhood is extended to plants, and how the self might shift in relation to them. Together, we’ll reflect on our earlier creative responses in light of these ideas, before expanding the practice with a new exercise that deepens this line of inquiry. You’ll be encouraged to continue this exploration between sessions through writing or visual work inspired by these themes.

Session 3: Plant Ontologies

Next, we’ll focus our attention to a single plant whose growth and transformation invite us to consider time from a non-human perspective. Through close observation and creative interpretation, we’ll explore how plants might embody rhythms and realities outside the frameworks of human experience. Drawing inspiration from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s practice of ‘delicate empiricism’—an approach grounded in patient, intuitive attention—we’ll reflect on how perception shifts when we attune to the slower, cyclical, or more fluid tempos of plant life. This session opens up space to imagine the inner worlds and psychologies of plants, expanding our sense of what time and consciousness might mean beyond ourselves.

Session 4: Holding Space for Silence

In our final session, we’ll explore how observation and non-verbal expression can deepen our connection with the natural world. We’ll look at artists whose practices centre around quiet attention, using drawing and other visual forms to communicate beyond words. This session is also a space for participants to share part of their own practice and reflect on how their intentions or perspectives may have shifted throughout the course. Together, we’ll close by considering how silence, stillness, and observation can be integrated into ongoing creative and relational work with plants.

We’ll stay connected through a dedicated WhatsApp group, offering a space to share reflections, ideas, and inspiration as the course unfolds.

About Joseph Walsh:

Joseph Walsh is an artist rooted in forging human-nature connections through his work with plants. Using drawing, painting and film to actualise a co-existing with nature. He studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths University, and has delivered courses and workshops at the Berlin Art Institute, Beaconsfield Gallery and the Jamyang Buddhist Centre, and IMT Gallery, as well as sharing insights with art students at Goldsmiths and Reading Universities.

Below we offer you a glimpse of what to expect from Joseph’s course, as told by previous course participants:

“This was a genuine call to communing and tending to the plant world, and the more than human. Expertly chosen references, generous feedback and discussion. Unique course."

“Joseph’s course was a sensitive and immersive turn to plant sentience. Art, philosophy and indigenous perspectives are presented as thinking pads, accessible and fascinating. Time and space is given to exercises and activities, which allowed me to develop my own practice, which was precious.“

“Inspirational. Great depth of content, indigenous voices, art, literature, science, and experience combine here in powerful ways. Great sensing opportunities and artistic techniques to try for ourselves”.

Ready to see plants differently? Reserve your place now via the link below to join this online course in creative plant observation and connection.