Artist Statement

After a career working with textiles, I took up ceramics, which is now my passion.  Initially I wanted to have a go at everything, but am now focussing on slab built works, both stoneware and earthenware, coloured mainly with oxides and the odd hint of glaze.  The results are abstract, sculptural pieces, decorated in a painterly way, often with free brushwork and making use of resists.  Oxides, applied in this way, can produce effects not dissimilar to water colour paints, but perhaps with a greater element of surprise when the final result is removed from the kiln.  Experimenting with oxides and overlaying dots and splashes of glaze has led to colour combinations which evoke coastal themes, now being further inspired and developed following my recent move to West Cornwall.  

Being in Cornwall has also allowed me to develop further forms and shapes.  Boat hulls, the complex curves of sails in the wind, the pull of waves on a pebble beach and then, inland, on the Penwith peninsula, the Neolithic and Iron Age sites framing and forming focal points for wide open landscapes.  These all inform my hand and eye, when I sit quietly, with a large sheet of paper and shapes begin to emerge.

My work is of a small, easy to handle scale and often suitable for outdoor as well as indoor use.  Alongside individual small sculptural pieces, I have also enjoyed producing larger, installation works, made up of smaller modules.  An example was “Flock” a set of abstract, bird-like vessels, arranged across a lawn.