The season between opened up a new way of being for me. Slowing down, turning inward, and focusing on what truly speaks to me and what I love to make rather than making what the market wants. This season was filled with realisations and revelations. Once seen or experienced it can never again become unseen or inexperienced.
I create slower, I create with more intention and focus. Creating is a form of meditation, a coming home to myself now. I’m less afraid of experimenting and going down new and unfamiliar paths. Surrendering to the uncertainty I find it always brings me to things I never even thought possible. The season between is now my new reality.
I don’t believe that I chose clay, I think clay chose me. I just took a really long time to get the message.
My mother is a potter and has been one since before I was born. As kids, we occasionally played in the studio but I never considered it as a career option.
In every stage of my life clay found me. In 2013, after having considered literally most other career options a friend suggested that I start selling my ceramics. It was merely a hobby at that point but I signed up for a market a couple of weeks later and started my new journey into clay. Since then I have been blessed with amazing teachers in life and in clay including Kim Sacks and John Shirley.
Now I fill my days building beautiful vessels and experimenting with new techniques. Ceramics is a treasure trove filled with infinite possibilities. I believe you can explore and experiment your entire life and you will still not have tried everything there is to try at the end.
I love to draw and try to combine drawing and ceramics wherever I can. The prints for my porcelain work I create by stitching hand-drawn flowers onto the artist’s canvas. I can then recreate an image in clay using the impression left behind by the stitching.
I also enjoy sgraffito which is a form of decoration made by scratching through a surface to reveal a lower layer of a contrasting colour or scratching directly into the clay body and inlaying colour into the grooves.
My primary method of construction of pieces at the moment is hand-building. Each of my creations is created by using slabs, coils, and pinching.
Since starting to create art full-time, I’ve been searching for the meaning or reason behind what and why I create. As the world came to a halt with Covid-19 and I slowed down, there suddenly was nowhere to go and no pressure from outside to produce. For the first time, I could focus entirely on the joy of creating. I am no longer searching for a reason to create; I create to experience that joy and to learn how to share that experience with others.
