I am currently teaching full time in a secondary school in Birmingham. I have always worked in clay using hand-building techniques. The texture of the clays and the control experienced in building is tremendously exciting. Exploring the tensile strengths, pushing the boundaries of my knowledge and expectations of clay and exploring techniques is such an important part of what each piece I make is about. Whilst I start my work with drawing, rolling out and joining the slabs has always been a key point in the creation of a piece or series. The stretching and broken edges contribute to my thoughts on the shapes I want to make.
Whilst I am working at present to relate my work to the garden I clearly do have more than just a passing interest in architecture and what buildings might offer in relation to my work. Architectural features, particularly ruins, be they quietly decaying Doric columns or Victorian moulded terracotta, have always been a fascination for me. I love the detail of the work (the way such is contrasted with the broad sweep of unmoulded often vertical surfaces) and the tonal sculpture that light and dark play such a part in this sort of decoration. I think it is also true that my interests for these stems from my rural childhood. Seeing plants growing out of brickwork and lichens growing over carved surfaces I now recognise that my love of the contrast of these, the regular and the organic, is as strong now as it was when I was a child.
I have spent a large part of the last 10 years extending my knowledge in printmaking. Intaglio and relief processes are equally as important as clay is to me. When I print onto and into surfaces I am always aware of the clay body and the implications of the new descriptions applied to the clay on what sort of shapes I am trying to generate with the various pieces of prepared clay.
The work is made with a white bodied, heavily grogged, clay and is fired to 1260C in an electric kiln.

Exhibition work

2006 Melbourne Festival, Derbyshire
2006   Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Midland Potters Association
2005 City Gallery, Leicester, Open Exhibition
2005 Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Midland Potters Association
2004 Bilston Museum and Art Gallery, Midland Potters Association

Education

1979 -1983 College of Ripon & York St. John (BA Hons)
2006 -         University of Wolverhampton (MA)