Pottery is in my blood. It came as no surprise when my
Aunt, a tireless digger into the family's past, found that
my great grandfather was a potter.
In England, the history, techniques and the design of ceramics
formed an integral part of my higher and professional education
at Medway College in Kent, at Wolverhampton Polytechnic, where
I received my Bachelor of Arts Degree and at Sussex University,
where I completed teacher training.
Those years provided a valuable foundation on which to base
my work with clay: the most technically difficult, and yet
most spiritually rewarding of media forms.
My multifaceted and eclectic body of work includes thrown,
altered and handbuilt stoneware and porcelain,
fired to cone 6 and 10 in oxidation and reduction, Raku and
pit fired pieces and more recently, majolica decorated
earthenware.
My high fired pieces, made for the kitchen and dining room
as well as for display of plants and flowers are based on
classical forms, carefully altered at the wheel.
Wide, richly glazed platters for displaying and serving food,
ample bowls, baking dishes with luscious, deep surfaces, elegant,
well balanced teapots, light, comfortable mugs, serene, one
of a kind vases inviting contemplation, are all part of my
high fired functional work.
Raku and pit fired pieces offer me an opportunity to use
my play instinct; to indulge my imagination completely. They
transform clay into discrete ideas, going beyond mere dexterity.
I manipulate the clay, while the firings with all their vagaries,
are the final arbiters of success.
Majolica is vibrant, brilliantly coloured low fired decorated
earthenware. Its glazed surfaces ask to be touched and it
affords a celebration of life itself. I produce Majolica dishes
to be used at the table, vessels for plants and flowers and
giftware.
While I am inspired by ancient ceramics and by form, texture
and colour in nature, my work is uncompromisingly contemporary
in character.
Because I want to make pieces which come fully to life with
use, you, as the buyer participate in the final realization
of my work, as you hold a warm stoneware mug of coffee in
both hands at breakfast time, as you arrange a tomato salad
on a cobalt blue glazed platter, as you pour fragrant tea
from a teapot glazed purple with turquoise and cream streaks,
as you spoon asparagus soup from a black metallic glazed soup
cup.
As an artist and an educator, I value being a party to others'
sense of wonder, self discovery and delight in this timeless
medium.
I have traveled extensively throughout North and South America
and Europe, but my work has seen more of the world than I
have. It is in private collections throughout the world and
has been shown at a number of galleries in England and of
course, right here in B.C
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