I make sculptures of people in fired clay.
How is your personality reflected in your work?
It is probably no coincidence that I create people. I have always been fascinated by humankind and years ago it led me into studying psychology and then a career working with adults in training and development. My work is empathetic and I think this reflects my personality and approach to life. Besides, there is no room for anxiety or negative thinking when you're so focused on something like making art.
What has been your most touching or amazing moment you've experienced as an artist?
I would find it hard to pick a single moment as I am constantly charged by the process of creating vibrant and emotional likenesses and figures and this is what keeps me in my studio. But when someone falls in love with one of my sculptures and buys it, that is very touching and affirming for me and tells me I'm on the right track.
What has been your darkest moment?
Maybe the worst moment was when I sent a large consignment of figures by courier to a gallery for an exhibition in the Waikato and they arrived broken. They were not insured and the courier would not take responsibility.
How do you budget your time (in the studio and out)?
Well, I have the privilege of choosing how I spend my time without the pressure of having to hold down a job.
As a member of the artist-run art gallery, VIVA, I do three days a month working in the gallery and find talking to customers a valuable thing to do as an artist. Basically, the rest of my time is spent in my studio, researching and playing with ideas and working on my sculpture.
What other artists do you admire?
My influences are some of the post impressionist artists; Amedeo Modigliani, Auguste Rodin, Aristide Maillol, Matisse, Picasso and the classical forms of ancient Greece and prehistoric votive forms.
I also look to a number of current US ceramic sculptors who are doing innovative and exciting work in clay sculpture, some of it quite surreal; I find their challenging images exciting and study their applications of colour and finishes.
Where do you get your inspiration from?
Obviously I am charmed by the beauty of the human form and have benefited from life drawing and the study of anatomy.
I find that as my grandchildren grow into funny, interesting and beautiful people, that a lot of my work is inspired by them and other people I care about. That, and tapping into the deep emotional and observational fields of my life.
What are your plans for the future?
I like to work through a series of similar forms to explore the ideas that emerge and then move on to the next series, so the output is quite varied and prolific. Since September this year my work has had full-time exposure in VIVA gallery in Napier and is selling well, and I look forward to installing a group of exciting new head sculptures that I am working on.
For the near future, I am travelling to Tucson, Arizona in March 2017 to learn from one of those amazing US ceramic sculptors I mentioned. My need for more knowledge of clay forming, colouration, finishing and firing techniques seems to be endless, you just never stop learning in this medium and I guess this is what I'll keep on doing into the foreseeable future.
