I am based in South Oxfordshire, UK, working out of a purpose built studio in our garden. I've had the studio for sixteen years and it is just perfect.
I think I've alway made art, but not ceramics. it was the only thing I really enjoyed at school and unsurprisingly, moved on to Art School afterwards. After a degree in Graphic Design I spent 29 fantastic years working as an art director in London.
During my last years in London, I met Nicola Tassie, a highly accomplished potter who started me on the road to becoming a ceramicist. I know that graphic design and ceramics are probably two opposite ends of the art spectrum but I think the clean lines of what I do now hark back to my first career.
I've been doing this for eighteen years, and that is a comparatively short time in ceramics, especially if the bulk of your work is thrown. I think you continue to improve and evolve every time you sit at the wheel. There's just so much to learn. So while I can see a huge difference in the work I make now to at the beginning of my ceramics journey that maybe other's wouldn't.
I am motivated mostly by the simple joy of making. I find everything about ceramics engaging and magical, from the lump of mud at the beginning to opening the kiln after the final glaze-firing to find the glistening hot pots inside. Just like opening a treasure chest..
I have never really thought about the place of my work in the current art world. In many ways I make it largely for myself. Aren't artists fundamentally selfish people? I hope and believe that my work stretches from practical utilitarian to beautiful aesthetic.
Why should't something you use every day be a pleasure to look at and hold? But I believe that some people find it hard to see how a practical object can be art.
A month ago I would have said that my favourite artist, unequivocally, is Lucie Rie but, having seen a rather lacklustre exhibition of her work in Oxford and being given a book on Shoji Hamada for Christmas, I'm wavering between the two. The elegance, form and total originality of her work has always inspired me but I just love the loose spontaneity of the decoration of Hamada's larger pieces.
Sadly, I mostly see what is wrong with the pieces that I make - human nature I suppose. But I have a bowl that I made about ten years ago and have never wanted to sell. It's a medium size stoneware bowl, thrown wide, open and quite finely. After turning, but while still pliable, I distorted it by pushing the sides together into quite an extreme oval shape.
The distortion has to be more extreme than you want for the finished piece because the clay has memory and tries to return to the original shape in the kiln. The piece is finished in two homemade glazes - Ash and Velvet Black. I've made many squeezed bowls before and since but this one is still the best, just the right amount of distortion.