My work centres around the idea of the vessel. I use the vessel as a subject- to give meaning and form to an expression. Working through the medium of ceramics, I can be both builder and painter; can handle shape and structure, as well as exploring tone and colour. The pots have no subject, they are not about anything in particular and they
have no practical function; - they are made purely for looking at- for joy. I try to make something which I want to look at, which has meaning for me.
I start every piece, with only a loose idea about what I am going to make. I begin by rolling out slabs of stoneware clay with a wooden rolling pin. Most of the rolling is bashing the clay flat and the rolling smooths the material towards the end of the process. Clay doesn’t really suggest much- it’s cold and mute, so decisions continually must be made. Not what the piece will look like, which will in time become clear, but the details- how wide, how long, how thin or thick the slab- choices which determine shape
The objects I make are quite sharply defined, they have clear drawn ground plans, smooth walls, and clear edges, but this resolution emerges slowly. There are certain curves and undulations which a thin slab can manage better than a thicker one, but sometimes it’s the soft fatness of a rim or the weight of a piece which is more important.
Recently I have tended to build with the clay when it is fairly wet and floppy- at the edge of my control, at the point of collapse, where the clay is twisting and falling into shapes I could not imagine. Initially it is quite an intuitive and sometimes chaotic process, but little by little the object emerges. The clay dries, it’s fired, and everything changes. It becomes cold and hard- more rock than rag and a different life has to be looked for through the painting.
Layer upon layer of coloured slips and oxides are then painted onto the surface of the work, with repeated kiln firings in between coats. I try to find the colour which the work 'wants to be’- where form and surface work together. And the way something is painted, the size of brush, the direction of brushstrokes- all this changes the work- a small piece can be made larger, a hesitant shape can be made confident, a quiet piece can be rendered bold, simply by the way its painted. And everything which is put into a piece, whether literally or metaphorically, becomes the content of that work.
