Process

All of my ceramic pieces begin life as a drawing or painting.  I love the first stage where I research an idea, reading around the subject, drawing and sketching from nature and then starting to imagine how these ideas can be transformed into clay.

I mainly slab build my pieces and use a variety of decorating techniques, drawing heavily on my illustrative skills.  Sometimes I roll textures and plants into the clay which I then colour with slip and rub back into to reveal the designs.

Making days are my favourite days where I can lose myself in the process of rolling out the clay, cutting, forming and shaping the pieces.

I colour my work using mainly slips and oxides.  I decorate my work in a painterly way, mixing up the slip colours like you would when mixing paints.

I have recently started experimenting with sgraffito tools on my plates and spirit hares and I love this technique.  I really like the look of wood and lino cuts and I enjoy that I can emulate this by scratching back into the slip to reveal the clay beneath using these fine tools.  They are also very expressive to use and you can put a lot of energy into the mark making.

I have so many ideas for new pieces and not enough time to realise them all but I am always inspired by the magic of nature and feel driven to express this through my work.