Spirit of Place (2015)
A series of ceramic panels derived from studies of Newbiggin by the Sea in an attempt to capture some of the qualities of the seaside village in which I now live. It was primarily a fishing village but there was also a coal mining community. The pit closed in 1967 but there is still an area of the village known as "The Colliery". The small fishing community is centred around the oldest operational lifeboat station in the UK. The village is now marketing itself once again as a tourist destination. There is a flourishing Sailing Club, the Newbiggin Maritime Centre, a particularly spectacular bay in which the first permanent offshore sculpture resides on the breakwater, an iconic Art Deco Cafeteria in the village Piazza with its recently restored bandstand and the medieval St. Bartholomew’s Church is situated on Church Point overlooking the North Sea. The village is vibrant and provides numerous examples of imagery which are depicted in these works.
I am also influenced by the abstract
paintings of Peter Lanyon and Jeremy Gardiner which depict landscape and I am trying to represent in ceramic form, glazes and colours some of the
qualities that they achieve in paint in order to capture The Spirit of
Place.
