> Wellington born, 1982, bred and based, I work mostly with clay at my seaside studio.
I enjoy the many lives clay has as it takes the form of what has been stalking about in my head, or doesn't: at first it's a wet, heavy, often disobedient and always sensual material - smooth or gritty, cold or warm. You can form some general shapes, but just general. Then as it dries it becomes leathery, sometimes rubbery and has turned into a material to be carved with a knife. Soon after that it is dry, brittle, light and dusty, easily broken, sort of dead. Firing takes the clay dramatically into it's next incarnation: a ceramic, hard, sometimes it rings when tapped with a finger. Often there are cracks, and I like these - these life lines. It's also smaller, maybe by up to 10 or 15%. It may have sagged, it may have darkened - burnt a little - at the edges, like a pie. It's new. Later, standing before me on my desk, this new person is full of possibility - and that's when I have the most fun, I think. It's at this stage that the work becomes living. I'll watch their face as I apply the colour, and there is always emotion, a shared one: now and then joy, sometimes nostalgia, once or twice pride, often sadness.