I’m not entirely sure where my inspiration for pottery and ceramics came from but there has always been an influence from the time my father visited Japan in the late 1950s. He brought back several items as souvenirs of the time he spent there including a porcelain dinner service and several water colours in traditional Japanese style.

The service was rarely used in the house but it always had some presence as did several other items, the pictures and a more decorated platter which was hung on the wall in the hallway of his house.

The things I admired in the pieces, the simplicity of form and the precision. These are the traditional views we in the west have of the artisan nature of the Japanese culture. However the dinner service itself is a pastiche of western tastes and not traditional Japanese designs in any way. As I have grown up and matured in tastes and understanding I can see these for what they are. Technically excellent and beautifully designed for the market they were aimed at, but somewhat soulless.

I look now for the art in the process as much as the finished item. The making and craftsmanship in the immediacy of the creative work. Learning how to capture that, not to over or under work a piece, how to create an object out of the clay in which it is hidden, that is the journey I’m on.