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I have been playing with clay, glaze and fire in various ways for 60 years, and I have been enthusiastically concentrating on oblong plates for the last fourteen years. Plates incorporate ceramics with my interests in drawing, painting and decoration. They have steadily improved and my confidence as a decorator is growing.
Subject matter has ranged across landscapes, boats, portraits, animals and flowers, narrowing down over the past seven or eight years, to the point where I almost exclusively use swimming fish for my imagery.
The decoration is realised by using paper shapes to resist layers of coloured slip. Some plates have as many as ten layers of slip, plus fusible pigments under and over the glaze. They are fired to 1250C with a medium reduction.
All plates have integral hangers and thus can be displayed as wall decoration as well as used for serving food. The pieces should be read on four levels: as plates; as overall decorative objects; as specific imagery and, very importantly to me, as ceramic happenings.
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