a short story

After many years running a successful interior design business, a move to Herefordshire enabled me to change direction and dedicate my time to creating ceramics, primarily by throwing on the wheel. I started my learning with a ceramics course and subsequently built on that knowledge with throwing and glazing courses at Clay College, Stoke with Andy Mason and Kevin Millward and most recently with Jem Steward at Wobage Workshops.

My work is inspired by the natural beauty of the land and sea I have experienced in my time living on the coast in the East Neuk of Fife in Scotland and now in Herefordshire. I wheel throw my work and unapologetically make two contrasting styles of pots: land and sea. Those representing my view of the Scottish surf are full of texture, colour and glistening glazes. By contrast my pots that are rooted in Herefordshire use slips in a painterly fashion to evoke a sense of the land that is at the heart of rural life. Using throwing slip and coloured slips together with glazes applied in interesting layers, I look to capture the energy, flow and transitions in colour and texture that nature's palette offers us.

I live in a former dairy farm which is located on top of an historic monument; the Roman town of Bravinium. These two facts have influenced some of the shapes I have developed for my pottery such as my milk churn pots in honour of the former dairy and some of my classic pottery forms and exaggerated loop handled jug in reference to Roman pottery.

Sustainability

Creating ceramics can have a negative impact on the environment, from the extraction and disposal of materials to the very high consumption of electricity. To address that as much as I am able, harvested rain water is used and recycled in the studio, I recycle my clay and use solar energy to power the electrics in the studio and to run my electric kiln. I fire each piece of pottery twice. The first firing is the biscuit, or bisque fire, the second firing is the glaze, or gloss firing. Each kiln firing consumes 19-28kWh of electricity and between April and October each year I am able to run the kiln on between 75 to 100% solar power.