ABOUT ME

I returned to the creative and calming activity of pottery in 2014, after a 25-year career as a parliamentary reporter and editor. In 2022, I completed the full-time Ceramics Development Course at Forest Row School of Ceramics. I work from my studio in East Sussex creating individual pieces, hand-built in stoneware clay by slabbing, coiling and pinching. I am a member of The Sussex Guild, Designer Makers of Contemporary and Traditional Crafts.

In my work, I have explored sculptural forms and objects whose shapes change as one moves around them, inviting viewers to touch, lift and rearrange in new ways.  In their line, I have focused on the geometric elements of the circle, half-circle, angle, straight line and curve, and I have sought to achieve a sense of depth, balance, harmony and calm.  In their finish, I have burnished, polished, smoke-fired, rakued or left the surface naked to produce a natural finish suggesting movement in different ways. 

Initially referencing, for example, the striking lines of Hans Coper, James Oughtibridge and Barbara Hepworth, my work is also influenced by my study of art history.  I find fascinating the journey from realism, perspective and balance, underway in Italy by the fifteenth century, to abstraction, reached at the beginning of twentieth century by Franz Marc, Mondriane and, in particular, Kandinsky in his use of sharp shapes and clear linear qualities.