This process is a combination of aspects of painting and ceramics.

When I create these pieces I begin by reducing the clay into a paintable slip. This stage is really exciting and customizable because I have agency over the viscosity of the clay and can make it as thin or thick as I’d like. Depending on how much water is added and to what degree the clay is emulsified the same clay body can be made to be semi transparent to completely opaque and used in an impasto application.

Before the painting can begin, though, I need to create the surface to paint on. I start by rolling out a slab of clay to the desired measurements and transfering it to a surface that I can easily manipulate and move around as needed, as it will need to stay there to dry very slowly once I am finished. Once that slab is prepared I can begin work on it and I really enjoy painting on a slab of clay that is still wet and malleable because it is still very much alive. I can interact with it, make marks into it and change its shape. It really is a brief moment in which painting truly meets pottery and sometimes it feels as though I am doing both.

This process combines my favorite parts of painting and pottery and infuses them into a new technique of its very own. I generally consider myself a process-oriented/texture driven artist and these ceramic paintings afford me with the opportunity to engage in the satisfying process of painting with the unpredictability and wildness of ceramics.

A fundamental part of the pottery making process is the act of letting go and introducing the element of change and unpredictability. A driving force in the work that I make is in the intersection of nature and nurture and how they inform each other. As I make these ceramic paintings I am creating them in the present light of how I see clay interacting with each other as I paint, but once I ‘complete’ a piece I will surrender it to nature as I place it into the kiln and have many aspects of how I initially knew a piece completely change once through the firing.