A New Chapter — Welcome to Andy Jenner Studio

Sometimes the biggest changes in life begin with plans that don't work out.

Back in 2016, Diana and I were living in a mobile home on a holiday park in the UK. Each year we had to vacate it for January and February, and for our first winter away we had everything arranged: two months in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt.

Then events intervened. Following a terrorist incident towards the end of 2015, flights were cancelled. We received refunds for our flights and accommodation, but that still left us with one fairly important problem — we had to leave our mobile home for two months and suddenly had nowhere to go.

Not knowing quite what else to do, I suggested to Diana that she search online for "Long winter lets".

Up popped France.

We found a gîte in the Creuse, packed our bags and headed across the Channel. Neither of us could possibly have known how important that rather hurried change of plan would become.

Chapel at Dawn — photographed on one of my early-morning walks down to work on our new home. A canvas of this photograph now hangs there.

Falling for the Creuse

We enjoyed that first winter so much that we returned to the Creuse each winter afterwards. We grew increasingly fond of the countryside, its wildlife and changing seasons, the quiet roads and the small communities scattered across the landscape.

Wherever life took us, we had always promised ourselves that we would remain connected to nature. In the Creuse, that wasn't particularly difficult.

Then came 2020.

We were once again spending the winter here when Covid arrived and France went into lockdown. A visit that should have ended much earlier suddenly stretched all the way to the end of July.

It was an extraordinary period, but it gave us something we hadn't expected — the opportunity to look seriously for a home of our own in France.

With the Brexit deadline of 31 December approaching, there was also a certain urgency. We eventually found a property we could afford in an area we'd grown to love. We paid the deposit, returned to the UK for six frantic weeks to pack our belongings and sell the holiday caravan, then came back to France to complete the purchase.

We had made the move.

Our first home in the Creuse, bought in 2020 when what had begun as a winter escape finally became a permanent move to France.

Our French was far from perfect, but we were fortunate to find ourselves in a commune where people were welcoming, patient and extremely helpful. We were happy in our new home and, more importantly, felt that we'd found somewhere we belonged.

There was just one thing.

As time passed, we realised that although we liked the house, the property and its grounds lacked a little something. We weren't looking to move, however. It had been the only suitable house within our budget when we'd needed to beat the Brexit deadline, and by then we'd become very attached to the commune and didn't want to leave.

Then, in 2023, chance intervened again.

Three hundred metres down the road

The former mayor of the commune came to visit us, primarily to look at an essay Diana had written and had translated into French.

During the conversation, he happened to mention that his grandfather's house was going up for sale that very day.

Our ears immediately pricked up.

We asked a few questions and, before we really knew what was happening, he was herding us into his car to show us the property.

It was only about 300 metres down the road.

He didn't have the key that day, so we couldn't go inside. Instead, he literally drove us around the garden — and it was quite a garden.

There was plenty of land, an orchard, beautiful mature trees and wonderful southerly views across the surrounding countryside. It was only a taster, but it was enough.

We arranged to return the following afternoon to see inside.

The house that would eventually become our new home, just 300 metres down the road.

A curious visitor

The next morning, while looking through the kitchen window of our old house, we noticed a black-and-white cat sitting quite happily in the doorway of our barn.

We'd never seen it before.

It stayed there for a while, apparently perfectly at home, before eventually wandering off.

That afternoon, the former mayor arrived to collect me for our viewing. I jumped into his car while Diana walked down to the house with a friend of ours.

As we approached the property, I noticed something sitting on the doorstep, basking happily in the sunshine.

It was the same black-and-white cat.

Perhaps it was simply coincidence. But there are moments that somehow feel significant, and to us this was one of them.

Then we finally went inside.

The romance of the orchard, the trees and those beautiful views was suddenly tempered by reality.

The property had previously been rented to a young couple with a child and dogs, and the interior was in a terrible state. It was obvious that turning it into a comfortable home was going to require a considerable amount of work — and money.

We had a lot to think about.

Taking it on would inevitably mean putting many of the things we enjoyed to one side for a while. There would be fewer ventures out into the countryside and much less time for photography, writing and art.

But eventually we came back to one thought:

This could be our final home.

And if it was going to be our forever home, we thought it was worth doing.

Two years of renovation

And so began roughly two years of renovation.

Most mornings I would walk the 300 metres from our old house, crossing communal ground with wonderful views, and begin work. Diana would stay at home during the morning and prepare lunch. Sometimes I walked back to eat; sometimes she brought lunch down to me.

In the afternoons, Diana would work alongside me.

It became our routine.

The property consisted of an old house with an adjoining barn. We decided to concentrate initially on converting and renovating the barn section to create our new home. The original house itself could wait for another day.

The lounge during renovation — one small part of the work involved in turning the old barn into our new home.

As anyone who has renovated an old property will probably recognise, once we started, we discovered rather more work than we'd originally anticipated.

We installed a new kitchen and bathroom and built a stud wall to create a spare bedroom.

Building the stud wall that would eventually create a new spare bedroom as the barn slowly began to take shape as our home.

We had a completely new fosse septique installed to replace the old system, which no longer complied with current regulations, and the entire property was rewired.

Installing the new fosse septique — one of the rather less glamorous, but essential, parts of renovating our new home. 😄

The old building occasionally reminded us that it wasn't going to surrender without a fight.

At one point I needed to make a hole through a stone wall approximately 70 centimetres thick for a warm-air duct. Making a neat hole through a modern wall is one thing. Making one through an old stone wall is quite another.

Remove the stone you want and several of its neighbours can decide to accompany it.

The resulting hole was somewhat larger than the one I'd intended.

The electrics produced a few surprises too. Looking more closely at the existing wiring, I found numerous joins where short pieces of cable appeared to have been connected together and wrapped in tape, seemingly whenever somebody had run out of wire.

A complete rewire seemed the wisest course of action.

Despite all that, the renovation actually went remarkably smoothly. It was simply a great deal of work.

The kitchen taking shape during the renovation — still very much a work in progress.

The finished kitchen — quite a transformation from the work in progress above.

Nature comes indoors

Although there wasn't much time for days out with the camera, nature occasionally came looking for us instead.

While I was installing the kitchen one day, I had the doors of the house wide open. A robin flew inside, landed on the worktop and regarded me briefly, apparently checking on progress.

Having completed its inspection, it left a small deposit on the worktop and flew straight back out again.

I chose to interpret this as approval.

Chapel at dawn

Photography never disappeared completely during those two years. I occasionally found time to take photographs, partly to keep my stock photography portfolios ticking over, while Diana continued with her nature writing and artistic work.

One photograph from that period, however, has become particularly special to us.

One morning, while walking down from our old house to begin another day's work, I stopped to photograph a small chapel in the early morning light.

I called the photograph Winter Dawn.

Today, a canvas of that photograph hangs on the wall of our new home — the very house I was walking towards to renovate on the morning I took it.

There is something rather satisfying about that.

Finally, home

After about two years of work, we finally moved in.

We now have the land we'd wanted, an orchard, mature trees and those wonderful southerly views. More importantly, we've created a home that feels as though it truly belongs to us.

Finally home — the renovated barn transformed into the warm, comfortable home we'd imagined.

And we managed to do it without leaving the commune that had welcomed us when our command of French was considerably less useful than we might have wished.

Our old house, just 300 metres up the road, has now been emptied, tidied and prepared for sale.

One chapter is coming to an end.

Which means we finally have time to begin another.

Time to create again

Throughout all these changes, one thing has remained constant.

We have always wanted nature to be an important part of our lives.

It is where I find much of the inspiration for my photography and where Diana finds inspiration for her writing and art. Even during the renovation, when opportunities to get out with the camera were limited, that connection was never far away — in the countryside surrounding the house, in the changing seasons, in a robin flying through an open door, or even in the unexpected appearance of a black-and-white cat.

For years, Diana and I have talked about how my photography, and her writing and artistic skills might work together.

Now, finally, we have the time and opportunity to find out.

Time to enjoy the garden again — and to start thinking about what might come next.

And that is where Andy Jenner Studio begins.

From Andy Jenner Photography to Andy Jenner Studio

Photography will remain at the heart of what I do.

As part of rebuilding this website, we've gone back through my photographs and carefully selected new collections for the Bird, Wildlife and Landscape galleries. Rather than filling them with everything I've photographed over the years, we've tried to choose images that we genuinely enjoy and are proud to show.

But the change from Andy Jenner Photography to Andy Jenner Studio gives us room to explore something broader.

The Studio will allow us to bring together my photography with Diana's writing and artwork, and to develop prints, canvases, stationery, gifts and other nature-inspired pieces.

Some things will be entirely photographic. Others may bring together image and word or develop from Diana's artwork. And there will undoubtedly be ideas we haven't thought of yet.

What ties them together will be the thing that has been important to both of us throughout this rather unexpected journey:

Nature.

We hope to build the Studio gradually, creating things that reflect our love of the countryside, wildlife and natural world — things that we enjoy making and would be happy to have in our own home.

And, of course, we hope that over time Andy Jenner Studio can become a small business as well as a creative venture, allowing us to earn something from work that means a great deal to both of us.

Another new chapter

Looking back, there is something slightly improbable about the route that brought us here.

A cancelled trip to Egypt led to a Google search.

That search led to a winter in the Creuse.

Repeated winters led eventually to a permanent move to France.

A chance visit from a former mayor led us 300 metres down the road to his grandfather's old house.

A black-and-white cat appeared at both houses on the very day we were going to see inside.

Two years of renovation turned an empty shell into our home.

And now that home is giving us the opportunity to return properly to photography, writing, art and the natural world that inspired them in the first place.

There is, admittedly, still Diana's study to finish before I'm allowed to declare the renovation completely over. She has been remarkably patient about this, although I have a feeling that patience may have its limits, so perhaps I'd better move it towards the top of my list.

But we're getting there.

Andy Jenner Studio will continue to grow over the coming months, and we hope you'll come back occasionally to see what we've been doing.

For now, have a look around the new photography galleries, enjoy the photographs and perhaps discover something that makes you stop for a moment and look a little more closely at the natural world.

Welcome to Andy Jenner Studio.