My Degree Show Work - June 2013

 

For this series of work I have taken inspiration from my environment, my locality; the pinewoods and dune-backed beaches of Formby and the Sefton coastline, hoping to evoke the reimagining of childhood memories, the smells, sounds and sights of a landscape that is so familiar to me.

 

The textures I carve are representative of the ripples on the beach left by the tide, pinecones littering the woodland floor or swathes of marram grass dancing in the wind. Forms are simplified to an abstract level as I am particularly drawn to abstract qualities of the work of certain artists such as Kandinsky, Calder and Miro.

 

Pieces are handbuilt, sometimes using a plaster mould as a former, then refining and perfecting the form whilst the clay is still fairly soft. Carving may take anything from an hour to a day depending on the size of the piece and the complexity of the design.

 

I use sprayed engobes and brushed oxides, firing to 1060 degrees. Some pieces are coated with a copper-based mixture before Raku firing and plunging into sawdust. This gives a beautiful range of colours and effects but is very unpredictable which makes it all the more exciting.