January 2026
My current MA work is centred on Memories of Place - a body of work responding to Sawbridge, a small hamlet in Warwickshire, UK. This quiet landscape of open countryside holds deep personal significance for me. It is both a place of sanctuary and a constant source of inspiration, offering space for reflection and connection.
The work is inward and autobiographical, rooted in lived experience and emotional memory. Using the topography of Sawbridge as a reference point, I seek to distil the essence of the landscape - not to describe it literally, but to translate its contours, rhythms and atmosphere into my own sculptural language.
The following photographs form the early visual research for Memories of Place. Taken in and around Sawbridge, they act as starting points rather than conclusions - fragments of observation that have informed the initial development of the work, and continue to shape the direction of my making.
w/c 29 December 2025
Quiet Beginnings
The week between Christmas and New Year has always felt like a kind of limbo - a suspended time where days blur into one another, bin collections are missed and leftovers seem endless. There’s a looseness to it that feels both disorientating and oddly welcome, a pause before the year gathers momentum again.
On a Christmas Eve dog walk we spotted the first daffodils beginning to emerge. Such a subtle yet powerful reminder that growth rarely announces itself loudly - it happens slowly, quietly, beneath the surface. That moment felt deeply resonant with the journey my ceramic practice has taken throughout 2025, where change has been gradual, often imperceptible, but undeniably present.
By continuing to embrace my methodology of distilling memories of place into abstract vessel forms, I feel I am beginning to work with greater clarity and intention. Form, surface and emotional resonance are settling into place as my primary means of expression. Cristine Bath’s words — “by exploring, through matter and gesture, the rhythms and energies that flow through nature” - articulate something I have been sensing for some time. I truly feel as though I am starting to uncover my own sculptural language and with it, a deeper emotional connection to my work.
Creatively, this week has been less about output and more about rest and reflection. That said, in my home studio - wrapped in layers against the bitter cold - I returned to blending Valentine’s black clay PF680 with Potclays White St Thomas, continuing my exploration of creating a palette of soft, muted tones. I quickly built a small upright test form to observe how the two clays interact structurally and visually and how those relationships might translate through the firing process. It’s a modest start, but one that feels quietly purposeful.
I also finally managed to visit Quiver at Lakeside Arts in Nottingham. Spending several hours with Kate MccGwire’s work was a powerful and absorbing experience. Her intricate use of feathers - the repetition, pattern and meticulous placement - creates surfaces that are at once mesmerising and quietly unsettling. What struck me most was how the feathers operate simultaneously as material, mark and memory, forming rhythms that feel alive and continuously shifting as you move around the work.
This relationship between material, surface and embodied experience felt particularly relevant to my own Memories of Place work. MccGwire’s surfaces do not simply decorate form; they hold meaning, tension and emotional weight through repetition and restraint. It was a reminder that surface can act as a carrier of memory - something sensed rather than explained - and that subtle shifts in rhythm and density can profoundly alter how a work is read and felt.
The exhibition included works spanning more than twenty years of her practice, and while I was completely blown away by the strength of the work as a whole, I also found it quietly encouraging to see how the depth, confidence and clarity of her work has evolved over time. It felt like a generous reminder that practice is something that unfolds slowly, shaped by persistence, doubt and continued attention - a reassuring thought as I navigate my own uncertainties.
What’s Inspirating Me This Week -
The ceramics of Leah Kaplan - particularly her use of texture, pattern and the way light moves across her surfaces. There is a quiet confidence in her work, where flow and structure coexist, allowing the surface to breathe while still holding complexity. Her sensitivity to material and restraint feels especially relevant as I continue to refine how my own forms carry memories of place and movement.
w/c 5 January 2026
Between Doubt and Discovery
In an interview on Louisiana Channel, the American artist Sheila Hicks very calmly says, “hang in there, because you never know what the next discovery will be.” Those words have taken on a particular weight for me this week. I find myself quietly repeating them - hang in there - as a way of staying grounded and present, even when my thoughts feel anything but settled.
With next week’s assessment approaching, I am being asked to make a clear commitment to the direction I want my Memories of Place work to take as it moves towards the final show. While I feel absolute certainty in the concept and working methodology underpinning my practice, I am far less sure about the sculptural direction my ceramics should take. This uncertainty has sent me into a spiral of thinking, accompanied by a frustrating lack of action.
Yet I have a growing sense that learning how to sit within this discomfort - rather than trying to rush my way out of it - may be an important turning point in my practice. If I can understand how to navigate this moment of doubt, it has the potential to become a breakthrough rather than a setback. Right now, though, it feels very much like standing on the edge of a cliff, unsure whether to step forward or retreat.
In an attempt to untangle my thoughts and better understand my emotional connection to the work, I spent several hours this week translating my jumbled thinking into a mind map. This felt like a necessary pause - a way of laying everything out and looking at it more clearly. While it has offered some reassurance, I am still processing the many strands I have been exploring over the past few months. Whichever direction I eventually commit to, I know it will require me to go even deeper into that area of enquiry.
A small batch of test tiles also emerged from the kiln this week - the results of ongoing experiments with glazes, oxides, underglazes and slips. As ever, it was a mixed outcome: some promising surfaces alongside others that need significant reworking. Once again, I was reminded that I don’t enjoy the process of glazing and its unpredictability. And yet, paradoxically, it is this very lack of control that I embrace when building intuitively and organically in clay. This realisation continues to steer me back towards working with coloured clays and naturally pigmented bodies - an area I have been quietly revisiting over the past few weeks.
At the moment, I remain uncertain about exactly where the work will move next. I’m hoping, perhaps unrealistically, for a sudden moment of clarity. For now, though, I am holding onto Sheila Hicks’ words - hang in there - trusting that the next discovery will reveal itself in its own time.
w/c 12 January 2026
Sitting With the Uncertainty
Over the past six weeks, a quiet but persistent weight has been building at the back of my mind. With the impending assessment, I knew the inevitable questions would surface: Where is the work heading? What comes next? Where do I want this body of work to be for the final show? The thought of having to make a clear decision - to commit to a direction - has felt genuinely terrifying. As I wrote last week, this pressure sent me into a complete spin, leaving me momentarily unable to move forward with any real sense of clarity.
Seeing my work from the past four months laid out together during the assessment, however, offered a rare and valuable moment of distance. Standing back, I could finally begin to identify two or three areas that genuinely connect with me, rather than trying to hold on to everything at once. What became clear was a consistent language beginning to surface: the use of line through both surface mark-making and the development of pattern and texture; curved forms and organic, flowing shapes; and a strong engagement with coloured clay bodies, whether created through stains or through the blending of natural clays.
Now comes the more difficult task - navigating a way to merge these strands into a single, coherent direction that can move the work forward. Where that combination might lead, I honestly don’t yet know. At the moment, all I can do is sit with these thoughts, reflect a little longer and try to listen carefully to what the work itself might be asking of me. Not for too long, though - because at some point, a decision does need to be made.
As for the outcome of the assessment itself, I wait with a mixture of anticipation and apprehension. It will be a few weeks before feedback arrives, so for now, this feels like a moment of pause - suspended between uncertainty and the possibility of clarity just beginning to form.
w/c 26 January 2026
Between Two Paths
Back at university this week after a short period away, I’ve spent time reflecting on where I am with my work, and on the conversations I had with the assessors during my third assessment. I would like to say that I have emerged with a clearer sense of direction, but any clarity I do feel still seems fragile - as though it could slip away at any moment.
Working within my established methodology for Memories of Place, I believe I have now identified two potential paths for my work over the next seven months, leading towards the final degree show in September. The difficulty lies in the fact that I can only meaningfully pursue one of these routes if I am to develop a cohesive and resolved body of work within the time available. The other, however tempting, will need to be set aside for now.
The dialogue, interaction and connection between myself and my work are of paramount importance to me. I am continually trying to convey the rhythm of memory through the rhythm of making - allowing form and surface to work together in a way that feels intuitive and honest. When these elements combine in a sympathetic and harmonious way, the work begins to reveal something deeper: a relationship between material, surface and embodied experience that carries the emotional weight of a memory of place.
The first potential direction would focus on intuitive mark-making across the surface of sculptural vessels or forms. The second would explore coloured clay more deeply, distilling memories of place through surface texture and the subtle suggestion of colour. For now, it has been agreed that I will continue making exploratory forms while gathering my thoughts and testing these ideas further, with the intention of committing to one clear direction by the end of February.
While I am hopeless when it comes to decision-making, I am usually very good when faced with a deadline. The pressure is certainly mounting and I am acutely aware of the fear of making the “wrong” choice. I can only hope that over the next four weeks the right direction will begin to reveal itself - quietly, but unmistakably.
Away from the studio, the garden at home has been offering small but steady reminders of renewal. The snowdrops have appeared in abundance and the daffodils we first spotted on Christmas Eve are now in full bloom - and it is still only January. On a recent dog walk we saw the year’s first lambs and later spotted a muntjac deer quietly helping itself to fallen crabapples in the garden. These small signs of new life bring me such joy and feel like gentle reassurance that growth happens whether we are ready for it or not.
