It is this union of material, meaning and place that first drew Yianni to champion McCausland’s practice. The artist’s pigments are taken directly from iron-rich earths and sites marked by history, so that the ground enters the painting as both source and substance. Yianni is drawn not only to the work itself, but to the way it is made: “slowly, attentively and with deep respect for the land from which it comes”. What emerges is work of genuine depth and purpose, where beauty is never detached from history, and where the surface carries the trace of labour, extraction, care and community.

That balance between the poetic and the purposeful extends far beyond the studio. McCausland is about to open Tailings, a large-scale solo exhibition with Yianni at CLOSE Gallery in Somerset, while also working on a book project with Finnish writer and curator Mika Hannula, due for publication later this year. A forthcoming collaboration with chemical engineers at Witwatersrand University will focus on waste materials at a former gold mine near Johannesburg. Alongside this work, she leads Seeds of Feral Thought at the Slade School of Fine Art, a research group exploring alternative and experimental approaches to ecology and sustainability at the intersection of social, racial and environmental justice through artwork, writing, performance and film.

Asked about her biggest achievement to date, McCausland points to completing a doctorate, something she describes as entirely beyond the expectations of her younger self. It is a telling answer for an artist whose practice is built on inquiry and rigour. On Earth Day, her work offers a powerful reminder that landscape is never neutral: it holds the traces of what has been taken from it, what has been left behind, and what painting can still bring to the surface.