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 experience. Her intricate use of feathers - the repetition, pattern and meticulous placement - creates surfaces that are both mesmerising and unsettling. What struck me most was how the feathers operate simultaneously as material, mark and memory, forming rhythms that feel alive and continuously shifting depending on how you move around the work. It was a reminder of how surface can carry both intensity and restraint, something I am keen to hold onto as my own work develops.
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.
