Upcoming Events

“Joy” exhibition running from the 1st of April until the 30th of May. Based in the North Coast Visitor Center in Thurso. Opening times can be found on their website.

“Better with company”

Hand sculpted seal and sea bird lying on a slab base. With the theme being Joy for this exhibition, I thought of sculpting a seal as they bring me so much Joy and then decided he needed a Scottish sea bird on his tail. I haven’t sculpted from a solid piece of clay in some years, so really enjoyed the challenge. Although I had forgotten how scary it is having to cut open your whole sculpted piece, hollow it out, and put it back together again! He also got frozen solid in my shed overnight, and so had to be left to defrost again; albeit then having to have a slightly smaller tail. So we have had an interesting adventure together.

I hand painted the seal and bird with underglazes, and gave the base a wash with copper oxide. After the bisque fire I put some clear glaze on the seals eyes and nose to highlight them, and fully glazed the base to have a nice contrast against the sculpted animals.

The joy of being in good company is food for the soul.

Stoneware
£350.

“My favourite tennis ball”

With the theme being Joy, one of my immediate thoughts was to make one of my beloved hound dogs. I have lived with different breeds of hound dogs for most of my life and they bring me immense Joy. Hound dogs have very particular personality traits. They love being cuddled up under blankets with you, and then sleeping , they love doing zoomies round and round outside, and then sleeping; but most of all they love being loved. They then give you that love back tenfold, that love can do nothing but fill your heart with pure joy.

We went away to Inverness for the weekend with our two dogs a while ago and one of them found an old tennis ball in the garden and it brought her immense Joy for the whole weekend. It inspired me straight away to make a hound dog with her favourite tennis ball for the exhibition.

I sculpted the dog and tennis ball out of textured terracotta clay , and rolled out a slab base to set them on.  Once dry enough I then hand painted the dog and tennis ball with underglazes, applying a copper oxide wash to the base. Once bisque fired I applied clear glaze to the dogs eyes and nose, and fully glazed the base to have a nice contrast between the two.

Cranked Terracotta
£350.