After a while, after so much ‘burning away’ and revealing what’s left behind, I feel the need for an immediate connection with clay, to form it directly, so that it holds its own structure, provides its own integrity, takes its imprint directly from me. This is an organic, thoughtful process that emerges slowly, as I first impress and texture strips of clay, tearing them apart and carefully overlapping them, then building upwards, led by my sensations and responses. It is like reconstructing a thought you have not yet put into words.

These structures, for me, seem to reflect the passing of time and exist somewhere in between the impermanence of waves and the aeons of land. They emerged at a time when my perception of the horizon changed. I didn’t move. Consequently, the need to respond intuitively to textured details became inevitable because looking at the big picture was not enough. There is a bigger picture every detail. The external is also internal.

Something transpires when you are standing still. So I find myself continually returning to the beginning, making sense and structures in clay…

Mixing earthenware and stoneware glazes together, letting go of control of the outcome, and welcoming the element of surprise are an essential part of my work. Each piece is fired several times. I live with the pieces between firings; like renewed relationships with old friends it takes time to know them again, to understand how they look and feel, and what might be required to make the form and surface inseparable from, and essential to, each other. Each firing, re-glazing, and re-firing uniquely effects both surface and form until the work finally ‘feels’ complete. Stretching, pinching, dropping, failing, living and remaking.

Recently I discovered everything is possible. It might not work together, like the many differences between porcelain and earthenware, from material composition to melting points, but still a combination is possible. A restless celebration of material and sensory allusion.