Artist Statement
I am interested in the patterns and layers of life and what they obscure or reveal, from the particles of my day & the minutiae of life, to the lines of the trees in my local wood. Standing sheltered by oak trees in the middle of an urban sprawl, I wonder is it the trees or the gaps between that hold me there secluded?
The writings of Georges Perec and particularly his exhortation for us to look at the infra-ordinary rather than the dramatic, telling us to question our teaspoons, our footsteps up the road or the old layers hiding under the wallpaper, drive my work and inspire me.
Gaston Bachelard's book the "Poetics of Space" reminds me of the power of reverie, while Alice Miller's writings have taken me back into the landscape of childhood.
We humans seem to struggle towards meaning in the way plants bend to the light, it is essential to our growth, and I have found that exploration is for me as necessary as breathing and essentially I work to illuminate that essential question "just what in the hell is going on?"
September 2006
CV
Books
Firing: Philosophies Within Contemporary Ceramic Practice (David Jones)