Having lived in Cornwall for over thirty-five years, the coastline has become inseparable from my practice. I spend a great deal of time walking the shore, collecting the small things that are easily overlooked; limpets, pebbles, fragments of rope and buoys faded by years at sea. These weathered finds form the starting point for the work I make.
Working in high-fired stoneware, I hand-build small ceramic creatures and objects whose forms sit between the observed and the imagined. A limpet shell may become a figure; a pebble may acquire a presence of its own. I am interested in the point at which an object begins to feel animate, when a pair of eyes, the subtlest expression is enough to suggest a character without fully describing it.
The surfaces are finished with homemade glazes and wild-clay engobes that create dry, stony textures and weathered colours, occasionally interrupted by brighter, painted flashes that echo inorganic coastal debris. I want them to appear as though they have been washed ashore rather than made in a studio.
Scale is important to me. The work is intentionally diminutive, often small enough to rest in the palm of a hand, inviting a slower and more intimate encounter. I want these objects to be instinctively held rather than simply observed. Instead of documenting the coastline, I hope to evoke the experience of exploring it, of noticing, collecting and imagining.