I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that people seem to have a very strong and immediate connection to the porcelain plates I make. They are like Mandalas in away. Carl Jung believed that through drawing and painting Mandalas, which were for him, geometric configurations within a circle, the unconscious could be accessed and it’s messages expressed, resolved even.
I have come to find that drawing or painting anything within a circle in a free stream of consciousness way brings my unconscious world into view.
I sometimes have a sense if something I want to visualise, more often than not a deeply personal gesture, unmet need or desire. I want to suffuse the image with emotion. I want the glass glaze and brittle porcelain to throb with it. I focus intensely. Sometimes it comes through and people connect with it.
My friend Jenny ‘had’ to have my, ‘Say Yes’ plate because ‘that’s me… That’s where I’m at, I have no idea how my new life will work out but I’m just going to ‘say yes’ to it. ‘
Another collector asks, ‘remind me again why they are different prices, you did tell me but I’m still looking at them not getting it… ‘
‘Some are more resolved, ‘ I explain, ‘some amaze me, I can’t believe I’ve made them and even some weeks later, I look at them and I’m still astonished. They are a moment in time, there is no space for error, they won’t ever occur again… They convey something well, I believe they are good art, that’s why. ‘
It’s taken 30 years for me to find a way to make art about my internal world that others can relate to and have an ‘aha I know this’ moment.
They are intimate, searingly passionate drawings that speak about universal conundrums and needs on something like a plaque or talisman that marks personal history.
