I choose to create vessels for their connection to domesticity – as commonplace objects like bowls, jugs or vases carry immediate associations I enjoy playing with. My starting point is familiarity. You can only challenge established forms if you start with what people know. Comfort is the opposite of art.
I first trained as a fine art painter, a discipline that continues to inspire me. Within my work, a perfect skin feels flat. Instead, I try to eke out something, as though I was painting it, approaching the clay as I did the canvas, uncovering rather than covering.
I place a lot of importance on finding truth in my expression, which is linked to my interest in psychoanalysis. I’m especially interested in the truths of interpersonal interactions and how this translates to making. I will often make counter-pieces to my pots, representing the psychoanalytic distinction between two parts of a person, the exterior and the interior. In these doubles, one pot may present an individual’s outward-facing personality, whilst the other imagines a hidden interior.
Co-founder of The Mews Coachworks; a multi-disciplinary studio in NW London.
