Ceramics

I have been working exclusively with clay over the past two years. It has been an intensely meditative and tactile experience, freeing me in some ways and allowing feelings and intuition to guide the direction of my work.

I use slab building techniques in all my work and everything is fired at earthenware temperatures. I started off with an aversion to making “pots” but found myself drawn to working with containers and cavities. Plump shapes sprout animal or human heads (the Anthromporphs series), bell shapes erupt into dancers with contorted limbs (the Dancers series), the warmth of terracotta invites exploration of archaeological forms (the Soulkeepers and small gods series), white clay calls for decorative flourishes and complex surface finishes.

Works flow from ideas and images I encounter in the world or as a reaction to previous works and preoccupations. This combined with an experimental approach using different clays, techniques and finishes leads to a diversity of forms and styles. I find this freewheeling process quite mysterious and it’s liberating not to hold myself accountable to intellectual constraints but simply surrender to the pleasure of making things.

There are traditions where a god is said to have moulded living things out of a clod of earth. Working with clay I feel I am a small participant in that primal act of creation with its endless possibilities and open horizons.

Anthropomorphs

These are "stoppered pots" suggestive of human or animal forms from many different cultures.

Agni H37cm

Minotaur H39cm

Oxhead H23cm

Cimarron H36cm

The Chieftan H36cm

Amaterasu H39cm

Oshun H38cm

Tachiyaku H37cm

Towin H38cm

nonVessels

Pseudo containers that are experiments in different ways of making hollow forms

nonVessel #3 H28cm

nonVessel #2 H31cm

nonVessel #4 H25cm

nonVessel #6 H23cm

nonVessel #1 H33cm

Two characters on an urn 5cmx29cm

Bioforms

Blue Hare H37cm

Bird H23cm

Gecko H34cm

Leveret H22cm

Griffinhead H28cm

Salamander 18cm

Soulkeepers & small gods

Theses are votive offerings that I leave at places I love and that are significant to me. Soulkeepers are hollow so as to harbour a part of my soul and have eyes to look out and protect the place from wind, fire and flood.