My studio sits at the bottom of the garden. It’s a new thing for me to have my own space to make. Before this, it was on the kitchen table amongst the kids' detritus. I work between this small pocket and the studio of the potter Tilly Young in Devon. Tilly makes the ceramics I paint upon.

Our working relationship has developed organically over the last 4 years. When in the throes of new motherhood with my first child, my mother-in-law whisked me away to paint on her sister (Tilly’s) pots. I had no idea it would become such a lifeline for me creatively.

Since then we have collaborated, and Tilly is generously passing on her knowledge so that I have since been learning and making my own shapes.

So that is how I work, between my shed at the bottom of the garden in snatched moments while the children sleep, or demand things at my heels, and then weekends away at Tilly’s where I pour out to my heart's content.

Motherhood has been the most grounding experience for me as an artist and in turn, also informs my work. 

Before children, I had all the time and choice in the world and it left me paralysed. While constricting my time so much that sometimes I think I will burst- it also and crucially allows me to focus. So that when I do get those moments of time and quiet to make I am able to channel my creativity constructively. This is my lifeline.

Pots have become the perfect canvas for my imagination, image, and mark-making. I am in love with their functionality. And in the making, going through their own lifespan from leather hard clay, shaping, and molding. Brushing slip to look like shell or stone, and painting a narrative on them that turns them on a pinhead into something more than just a bowl. And then there is the alchemy of fire and glaze that solidifies them.

The way I go about creating the images is a little like collage, I spend a lot of time daydreaming, drawing in my imagination. Collecting images that inspire me, photographing snippets, poems, texture, colour, mood- anything that triggers that feeling of nostalgia that I want to convey in a piece. Then when I sit down to paint I put it together like a collage. I rarely do preliminary drawings, and often the meaning of the tableau reveals itself after.

For my collection for Partnership Editions, I have created a body of work that I hope reflects my love of myth and classic sculpture, archeology, and jungian symbolism. Shards of dreams and a sense of nostalgia from another world. 

For this collection I have painted them all in wax onto the leather hard clay, then brushed slip over the spaces in-between to reveal the drawing, it is hugely satisfying and looks a little like woodcut which I love, and also adds a naïve quality. The wax then burns off in the firing.

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