Let's Talk Art Blog

 Do you love your sketchbook? Or is yours on the shelf gathering dust, with only  something on the first few pages? I confess I used to start my sketchbooks with grand intentions of filling it completely with marvellous drawings.

My journey with clay began when a potter friend donated a bag of recycled clay for me to 'mess around with'. The tactile hands-on nature of working in clay felt so immediate and new after years of holding paint brushes and other tools to create my art. I loved having a direct impact on the materials with my hands, it felt fresh and exciting (I gave up finger painting years ago!) I also realised that I didn't need a whole heap of expensive gear to get started with clay.

Wow! Amazing creations have emerged during my one day print and collage workshops. Beginners, hobby artists and currently practicing artists working in various fields have embraced this process, with great feedback about how enjoyable this working processes is.

Working this way helps me to focus on perhaps just one or two aspects of my art making at a time which encourages me to take a closer look at what I'm doing, how I am thinking about a particular art element and how I am working to resolve an issue. A series may be about colour, or employment of lines and shapes or often I find myself absorbed in process related investigations, whether that's working in layers or building a surface using glazes or fusing print and collage or m

If you're a creative you'll be familiar with the fear and excitement of staring at a blank canvas. The possibilities seem endless, but where do you start? I have no plan when I start a new work, I just know that the need to create is strong and urgent. I begin a piece with what looks like incoherent mark making, to energise the canvas and begin a dialogue with the surface. This immediately creates the opportunity to start to making decisions and consider preferences.

This piece was a challenge as I wanted to explore working on a smaller scale. My usual preference for canvas size is twice the size of this piece. I find larger work more engaging physically which creates a momentum and energy of its own. 'Inhabit' has a stillness about it which I think was dictated by the need to remain physically still in order to focus and apply paint in a controlled way.