Ceramics

After a break from full-time practice of almost 20 years, I have returned to making, aiming to stretch myself technically and creatively.  Despite gaps of many years from making, I’ve always found returning to working with clay is like an instinct; it comes back quickly. 

My work focuses on the vessel form.  I've tried to move away from this but find the idea of containment, of considering the vessel's outer and inner space and surfaces, a very compelling echo that informs my creative exploration and ceramic practice. My pieces act as a repository for memories and experiences, reflecting a deep connection to my cultural heritage and the rural area where I've lived for over 40 years.  My bases reference the curve of a tool, the form of the piece develops as part of an organic process as I respond to my material. 

Over the last decade, I have amassed quite a collection of photographs of the abandoned farm above our house (where we walk every morning), out and about in the highlands with family - well, actually everywhere I go I take photographs of machinery, equipment, landscape, fences, rusting metal, nuts and bolts.  

My return to clay had been a tentative one, one in which I started off by going back to what I know - larger scale vessel forms.  During the early explorations, instead of looking back at my photographs of my 'home island', its crofting landscape and  implements, I looked at the images I'd collected more recently.

In terms of the inspiration for my work, I realised that I have been so focussed on my Gaelic roots that I omitted to explore how my home of the last 40 odd years fits into my idea of 'belonging’.  I considered various ways to approach this and decided that, as a starting point, my forms should still be heavily influenced by my crofting heritage (my core) but my glazes would take inspiration from my Ayrshire home and collection of photographs.  

I successfully applied for a Visual Art and Craft Makers Award in 2021. Geared towards supporting creative development and experimentation, the awards are funded through a partnership between East Ayrshire Leisure, North Ayrshire Council and South Ayrshire Council and Creative Scotland.  

As well as developing new glazes using locally sourced clay and other found materials, part of my proposal was to catalogue the photographs I had, embark on some desk based research and return to working with sketch-books, something that I hadn't done in any serious way since my time at The Glasgow School of Art.

I did make a start on my sketch books and study drawings - but I can't stop taking photographs so when the abandoned farm 'up top' was set ablaze, I had to get images of the fire - and it's aftermath (fortunately no one was hurt). 

This has taken me down a route where I've started combining my drawings and photography using photoshop to create repeat patterns -and its become a bit of a creative obsession!  I'm still using a mix of drawings and photographs from my crofting heritage with those new drawings and photographs - and the next stage is to create a new body of work incorporating the vessel form, ceramic transfers and new glazes.