I throw my pieces, striving for lightness and elegance in form, sometimes deliberately distorting them, always using multiple trails of glaze. More recently, I have moved to hand-building tall vases which then become canvases for organic, bark-like designs.
I've always done two different kinds of work. Maybe the context of my childhood African home in Angola has shaped some of the distorted, and highly-textured pieces I've created in the past, and appear now again, in a more abstract form, in my more recent bark vases. Maybe my Dutch heritage, and Delft Blue's influence on Portuguese ceramics and azulejos led me to blue-on-white decorative work. During the years I lived in Brussels, my workshop instructors Alain Losa and Carol Youngner helped me find the path I was searching for. Chris Keenan, a British potter and former apprentice of Edmund de Waal, taught me in his workshops, to focus on line, elegance and detail.
Since returning to Ottawa in 2016, I have been a member of Gladstone Clayworks, and of the Ottawa Guild of Potters. I am proud to be the current chair of the OGP Exhibitions Committee.
Artist Statement
My ceramics are inspired by natural forms, and serve as a canvas for abstract surface design. The patterns of my thrown and distorted bowls evoke the ever-shifting shorelines on the African beaches where I grew up. My tall hand-built vases are inspired by trees, their bark covered in creepers and dappled in sunlight. With all my pieces, I layer free-flowing streams of slips and glazes, adding depth and movement to capture the eye and make the viewer want to reach out, touch and hold.
