Artist information
I am a Watlington-based artist specialising in abstract ceramic sculpture.
From a young age I have always been a keen maker, and as a child also dreamt about becoming a scientist. However, having discovered at school that I was a poor physics and chemistry student, I gave up on that idea! It was only after taking a ceramics evening class in my twenties when I discovered an outlet for both my creative and scientific passions that I fell in love with the medium of clay. I love the fusion of art and science involved in the experimental processes of ceramics.
After a couple of years of informal adult ceramics classes, I took a City and Guilds in Ceramics. It was there, and afterwards during a 3-year artist residency at a North London secondary school, that I developed my style of spiral-inspired, hand built sculpture and first started exhibiting my work. My sculpting continued for many years as just a side-line, alongside full time work, but it was only in 2019 that I launched ABCeramics more formally and with the help of Oxfordshire Artweeks, started working as a professional, commissioned artist.
Exhibition information
I make hand built, abstract ceramic sculptures, vessels and wall art, primarily using a stoneware clay that has had ground fired clay (grog) mixed into it. This, combined with dry matt glazes (my own recipes) creates a textured quality to the surface resembling lichens and moulds found in nature, or rusts and patinas that natural forces create on man-made materials. I enjoy blurring the boundary between the natural and the man-made - to make stylised, almost industrial or mechanical forms that also appear strangely organic. I am fascinated by urban decay and the way nature ‘reclaims’ man-made structures. It is a reminder that most man-made materials originated from natural materials, and that despite all our attempts to preserve them will eventually, in time, revert back to nature.
Much of my work is inspired by the spiral. I find the spiral a beautiful and pleasing form and am also intrigued by its ancient symbolic significance. Spirals can be seen extensively in nature in the form of plant structures, patterns of growth, and in the movement of elements. Prehistoric cave painting, tribal carving and Celtic/Viking knotwork are all ancient examples of spiral motifs and seem to demonstrate how early humans instinctively knew the significance of the spiral, which modern science has since proven with the discoveries of the double helix of DNA all the way up to spiral galaxies.
All my work is high-fired, stoneware and so is suitable for all year round display outdoors.
I accept private commissions, and will also be exhibiting at Henley Art Trail on May Day weekend at Venue 9, Pheasants.