There is a footpath I return to again and again a quiet fold in the landscape where the earth reveals itself in soft seams of colour. Some days it’s the deep rust of iron, other days a pale, chalky blush. I never know what I’ll find until I’m standing there, hands in the soil, listening.
Wild clay and earth pigments sit at the heart of my practice, but they began as something simpler a way of paying attention. The first time I dug a small handful of clay from the bank, it felt like uncovering a memory the land had been holding for years. I carried it home in my pocket, still damp, still smelling faintly of rain and roots.
Every piece I make begins like this with a place, a moment, a quiet exchange between land and maker. The foraging, the collecting, the slow washing and sieving, the forming and firing. Each stage becomes part of a living relationship between the natural world and my own sense of time and belonging. The clay remembers where it came from, and in working with it, I remember too.
The colours are what draw me in most. Rich ochres, soft greys, deep browns each one a story of minerals, weather, and the slow patience of the earth. I grind the foraged clays into pigments for my sketchbooks, and as I paint, the landscape and vessels returns to me in colour. Every mark holds a place. Every hue carries its origin.
Working with seasonal, raw, wild materials is the most magical part of my practice. It feels less like making and more like collaborating letting the earth speak through the work, shaping vessels and pigments that honour the land and the quiet histories held within it.
And every time I walk that familiar path, I’m reminded that the story isn’t mine alone. It belongs to the clay, the weather, the land, and the long memory of the earth beneath my feet.