Valley Creatives
Who We Are
Valley Press
There are places that invite work to happen.
Not through ambition or noise, but through rhythm — the pace of days, the shape of light, the way paths cross and uncross again.
This valley is one of those places.
People arrive here for many reasons. Some come to walk or cycle. Some come for a season and stay longer than expected. Over time, we began to notice something quieter taking place: artists, writers, illustrators, and makers settling into the landscape and allowing it to enter their work.
Valley Press grew from this observation.
It is not a publishing house in the traditional sense, and it is not a single voice. It is a shared space for work shaped by the valley — by its roads and terraces, its weather, its silences, and its long human history of movement and making.
Our own books and essays sit here alongside the work of others who live and work locally. Some are well-established, others are emerging. All are connected by attention: to place, to craft, and to the slow accumulation of meaning.
As part of our commitment to active participation in the local economy, Valley Press also functions as a point of connection. Through links and collaborations, we make visible the writers and artists who use this valley not as a backdrop, but as a working environment — a place that shapes thought as much as it frames images.
This is not a destination.
It is a passage — much like the road that runs through the valley itself.
Don Henderson
Social Sculptor
Don is an artist whose practice is rooted in the understanding that creativity does not begin or end with objects. Influenced by Joseph Beuys’ idea of Social Sculpture, he understands art as something that unfolds through lived experience — through land stewardship, shared labour, conversation, and the careful shaping of social space over time.
For Don, the boundaries between art and daily life are deliberately porous. The farm, the goats, the walks through the valley, the books, and the quiet exchanges with visitors are not separate projects, but interconnected elements of a single practice. Each is a way of working with place, responsibility, and attention.
The valley is not treated as a subject or backdrop, but as a collaborator. Its rhythms, constraints, and possibilities inform decisions both practical and creative. Work here is slow by necessity, shaped by weather, animals, and people rather than schedules or outcomes.
Through Valley Press and the wider work that surrounds it, Don’s focus remains on creating conditions rather than objects — spaces where reflection, care, and meaningful connection can take root. In this sense, the work is never finished. It continues to evolve, shaped collectively by those who pass through the valley and leave something of themselves behind.
Katherine Mary Henderson
Illustrator
Katherine is a writer and artist whose practice explores how meaning emerges through composition rather than accumulation. She is deeply interested in the classical literati traditions of Chinese watercolour, where individual elements are developed with care and restraint, then brought together so that space itself becomes active.
In this approach, negative space is not absence, but presence — a force comparable to wind, water, or light. What is left unsaid, unpainted, or unwritten carries as much weight as what is placed on the page. Composition becomes a form of listening, and arrangement a form of thought.
This sensibility runs through Katherine’s writing, editorial work, and visual decisions. Whether shaping a page, a paragraph, or a wider body of work, she works with balance, pause, and rhythm, allowing relationships between elements to do the speaking rather than emphasis or explanation.
Living and working in the valley has sharpened this attention. The landscape offers daily instruction in restraint and clarity: terraces shaped by necessity, paths defined by use, space left open to weather and time. Here, composition is never fixed. It responds.
Within Valley Press, Katherine’s work focuses on creating frameworks where meaning can arise naturally — where image, text, and silence meet, and where composition itself becomes a quiet form of poetry.
