ABSENCE AND PRESENCE IN MARK MAKING

Once a Whole Forest - 2021 - Glazed Terracotta and White Clay - H36cm W43cm D2cm

Alongside works created through careful and controlled planning, other works like the one above have been realised intuitively, slowly shifting in direction between abstraction and figuration at different stages of its making.

Often starting with a blank slab of clay my working methods are not so far removed from painting; I create my canvas or sheet from clay and I work upon its surface with a brush. However, rather than sitting proudly on the surface the brush marks I apply are temporary, they act to preserve what is already there, in this way my methods have a closer connection to printmaking. The use of resist materials protect the surface from erosion and wear, the brush mark will almost become absent, as I pre-empt the next stages of making, where I use reductive processes to remove ceramic material untouched by the brush.

On the work above I chose to obscure most of the preserved marks made using a dry paint-like glaze which leaves just an impression of my past mark making beneath its surface. Some areas have been sanded back to reveal lines of darker tone, the image left is one that alludes to a landscape; a tree and path, perhaps once a whole forest.

Through traces left visible from the layering and erasing process, the work engages with ideas surrounding our everchanging memories of place, a sense of re-working or filling in of fact and fiction. I have taken significant influence from Marc Augé’s text Oblivion, he writes:

“One must know how to forget in order to taste the full flavour of the present, of the moment, and of expectation, but memory itself needs forgetfulness: one must forget the recent past in order to find the ancient past again.”1

Detail - Once a Whole Forest -2021

The Air is Raw - 2021 - Parian Porcelain - H10cm W15cm On this porcelain form I have used the brush mark to mask out areas of relief, here I have begun to explore use of layering within the clay body, allowing the darker layer to add tonal qualities beneath the thin areas of white sitting above it.