Inspired by the world around me
BIO
My ceramics are an exploration of gesture, form, and colour. My work draws inspiration from the heritage of eighteenth-century English slipware pottery, using it as a starting point to create my contemporary ceramic sculptures and vessels.
My work is strongly influenced by my background as a painter. I create work that playfully imagines clay as the canvas, both in form and surface. I employ traditional pottery decorative techniques alongside mark-making usually associated with abstract expressionist painting to create lush, layered surfaces.
PROCESS
Drawing is fundamental to my creative process and my sketches play a major role in developing new work. My work is hand-built, using coils of red earthenware clay to recreate these drawings. The unfired clay is then painted using a palette of handmade slips (liquid clay) using both traditional ceramic and painting techniques.
The form is then slowly dried over the course of several weeks before being bisque fired. A range of glazes and oxide washes are then applied to achieve complex and varied surfaces, before finally being fired to 1100 degrees.
