Portfolio
Before becoming an artist, I spent nearly a decade doing academic archival research on women’s histories. Now, my practice explores what I have learned about material culture, folklore and historiography through painting and ceramics. Working primarily in watercolour and sgraffito carving, I draw on the flat graphic language of mimeograph printing, stencil-based illustration and folk art traditions to create narrative images that combine humour, warning and social commentary. I am particularly interested in how painted surfaces can function simultaneously as image, object and storytelling device.
My ceramic practice primarily deals with ideas of moral instruction, humour and folklore. Influenced by English mottoware pottery, I explore how the ceramic vessel can be both ornamental and persuasive. I am interested in reimagining vernacular rhyme, superstition and myth through the flat symbolic clarity of folk design while drawing on traditions of women’s decorative and intellectual labor. See more of my ceramic work here.
Working predominantly with stoneware clay, I apply layers of coloured slip or underglaze before carving through the surface using the sgraffito technique. The process of carving away the outer skin of the vessel to reveal its image echoes my larger social practice of feminist historical recovery and archival research. Each line carved becomes a deliberate negotiation between concealment and revelation: what is visible depends on what has been removed.
My illustration practice explores the intersection of folklore, mythology and sequential narrative. I use layers and washes of watercolour in combination with careful design and meticulous planning to create symmetrical compositions that draw on traditional folk design. My tarot series in particular seeks to restore the illustrative tradition of the tarot to its storytelling roots while reconfiguring its archetypes through contemporary feminist thought. See more of my illustration work here.
Alongside my studio practice, I maintain an independent archive dedicated to the Women's Liberation Movement and feminist print culture. Over the past decade I have built a collection of newsletters, pamphlets, posters and other ephemeral publications produced by women's presses and grassroots organisations, many of which were printed using mimeograph, stencil duplication and other low-cost methods. I am drawn to these materials not only for the histories they preserve but for the visual language they embody. Their imperfect registration, layered ink and direct, handmade quality emerged from necessity rather than aesthetic intention. That relationship between process, politics and material culture continues to shape my own practice, informing the carved surfaces of my ceramics as much as my approach to illustration and print. Read more about my social practice here.
