One of the most exciting and unexpected things to come out of the body of work I created for We all Cast Shadows is the collaboration with some wonderful songwriters and performers. I can now reveal that I have in my hands the first EP to be inspired by my artwork with the launch of this CD!

I had been working with Fiona from Happy 4pr for a while, in preparation for the exhibition and from that came the collaboration with Fiona Love, Liz Dykes and Andrew Weatherhead who took my artwork and the writing that I had been working on around the whole theme for We all Cast Shadows and created a series of songs. They were performed at the exhibition and they recently recorded them at Calder Studios in Yorkshire and the CD’s have just arrived with me and are now available to purchase.

There is something so wonderful about seeing how others can be inspired by something that you have held so close to your art for so long – bringing a freshness to a passion that lies deep within and this is how I have felt both reading the lyrics and hearing the incredibly emotive and poignant songs.

Fiona wrote – “Songwriters, Andrew Weatherhead Liz Dykes and me set about the wonderful and scary task of writing the songs for Gillian’s exhibition. We all chose a painting and wrote songs inspired by the theme of the exhibition. Gillian’s work is very emotive, so it made song-writing easier. Here is my song ‘We all Cast Shadows’ that simply wrote itself…(well not quite.) I had a little cry after writing it and was so honoured to have a beautiful choir, Sarah Parker, Dawn France and John Kavos to sing with me in the studio, plus the talented Andrew and Liz.”

So you can now listen to the music yourself. You can purchase the downloads of the songs here at songsofthesea.bandcamp.com or if you would like a hard copy of the CD (along with the beautifully designed CD insert) they you can purchase here in my shop – gillianleesmith.bigcartel.com.

The CD also features a poem by John Siddique called Holly Moon.

Songs of the Sea are also performing at the White Swan in Hebden Bridge at 9 pm if you happen to live near there and are able to make it.