JUDITH McNICOL

First published: March 2026

Geologist Judith McNicol studied the age-old lines of the Earth before embarking on an exploration of her own inner landscape

Contours, sediments, erosion patterns and the traces left by ancient rivers were once the language of Judith McNicol. Born in London in 1948, McNicol often felt alone as a child, detached from and fearful of other people, happy to disappear into her inner world. She sought solace exploring and collecting rocks, fossils and other “treasures” . Family holidays around Europe ignited a passion for maps, geology, archaeology, astronomy and all the subjects that the wonders of travel and discovery provide. She went on to study Earth Sciences at university, first in Geneva, Switzerland, then in London, ultimately specialising in Geomorphology, the science of landforms shaped by deep time and unseen forces.

The artist with McNicol’s Bird Gallery, 2025 right: miniature paintings and sculptures fill the three-storey gallery

A career in academia followed in which McNicol taught and travelled the world researching. It was fascinating work and she was good at it. On a field trip to the deserts of Oman in 1986, she studied “””networks of land ridges that, shaped by ancient meandering pathways of rivers whose deposited sediments had been frozen in time, were millions of years old. Later, NASA – having identified similar raised channels on Mars – used McNicol’s research to help determine landing sites for a Mars rover.

Waiting for the Light, 2021, marker pen on paper, 11.5 x 16.5 in. / 29.5 x 42 cm

However, McNicol began to feel dissatisfied with her work in the academic sector and, in the early nineties, during a research trip to the stark, frozen landscapes of Iceland, she had an epiphany. “Standing among the black rocks and white ice, I asked myself, ‘Why am I measuring things instead of simply enjoying the beauty of being here? I have mapped all of this, now it’s my inner self that I need to research,’” she says.