Artist Statement

I have been fascinated with the animal kingdom since I was a child and I respond playfully by making birds, seals, whales and other animals in clay as well as incorporating bird imagery in my sculptural works. There are subtle imprints of the impact of the man made world on these sculptures. I still enjoy watching animals in nature and the urban environment. I was recently commissioned to produce two sculptures of a frog and toad, now located in the brook in the Whirlow Hall gardens in Sheffield, incorporated into the family art trail.

I specialise in hand-building ceramic sculptural forms, with complex, textured and patterned surfaces achieved by applications of layers of slip, oxides and matt glazes through multiple firings. I slab build boxes, towers and vessels, influenced by architecture, ancient cultures and the relationship between the natural and the urban world. The surfaces on the ceramic vessels reference the passing of time on the human landscape. These structures allude to utopian and dystopian worlds created by the minds of men and women.