Natasha Khan is holding a card up to the camera, peering round the side to gauge my reaction. In the drawing, I see a figure in a witch’s hat standing next to a tree, unkempt and sinuous; an ominous tower looms in the scene just beyond them, dominating the background. It’s a beautiful image, charged with the kind of black-cat mysticism and gnostic energy that permeates so much of her work. “The tangled tower is about competition and comparing yourself with other people,” she explains carefully, “the innate critical voice frittering away your time and energy on what other people are doing, rather than your own process.”

And what does Khan’s process look like these days? The artist is still best known for her work as Bat For Lashes, of course, and a back catalogue that currently takes in five critically-acclaimed solo albums, picking up no fewer than three Mercury Prize nominations along the way. Nonetheless, she’s been dabbling outside of music for a long time now, with varying degrees of privacy: some of her more recent creative endeavours include film scripts, the aforementioned oracle deck, a novella, a new album, and a small human child.

Continue reading at Clash