Raw Material

I make vessels. They’re a form of communication which I’ve reduced down to bare, definite elements. I’m aiming for the taut energy and hidden complexity of a clear, brief poem.

My work is physical and sensual. The clay I use is silky, stubborn, muscular and acutely sensitive. My pieces have a plump, juicy quality like milky lemon curd and say ‘EAT ME’. But I like how that soothing comfort gets pierced by the achingly fine rims.

I am passionate about colour. It resonates with me on a visceral level. It is both beautiful and dangerous, like the sea. As with water, colour can’t be held down or fixed and has a strange and fugitive nature. It shifts and changes according to conditions of light or context. While it dazzles and ravishes, it also triggers doubt and uncertainty as one colour turns into another. Acid yellow becomes lime, or grey becomes violet at noon or midnight.

For me, colour is a kind of wilderness. It’s like travelling to a strange place where I feel awe, lost, bewildered and sometimes bored. I like borders and edges of things, liminal precarious spaces between security, exhilaration and the unknown. I long to feel safe, but seem to court risk. My big forms appear effortless but there’s such drama in the making. They take a month to make and often crack up.

I am profoundly interested in materiality. I find a potent non-verbal language in stuff. It is not cerebral, but it is intelligent. It asks that I notice the minute differences between textures, colours, forms and the space in-between. This attention or attending to the physicality of things has the effect of locating me in the world. It leads me away from my head and re-connects me to my own physicality, my body, my self.

This reconnection has the unexpected effect of making me feel spacious, vibrant and alive, like swimming underwater in a boundless ocean.