Sarah has exhibited at the Society of Designer Craftsmen on a regular basis and in a solo show in their Shoreditch Gallery and Pangolin London, at the Red Gallery, the Brick Lane Gallery, together with taking part in the London Design Festival.
Sarah’s work focuses on the figure, both in the abstract forms permitted in the language of pottery and through figurative ‘gesture’ sculptures. She first began to make with clay following a major accident in her later 20s (2004) and through attending courses with Sandy Brown at her studio in Appledore in Devon. Sarah studied ceramics at Central St Martins College of Art and Design and works from her studio in Barnet, Hertfordshire. Having spent a number of years working with low fired earthenware, exploring its semi-porous qualities, she now works with high fired vitreous ceramics (fired to stoneware, 1260°C). She is interested in the expressive possibilities available in clay and moving to stoneware has given this a sense of immediacy.
She works with softish clay, throwing on a slow-turning Leach Wheel, then applying a layer of white slip to release the grey body, allowing for vibrant colours to be applied.
She is also noted for her ‘gesture’ figures, roughly textured and often boldly formed sculptures. Working with the freedom of these forms expresses aspects of herself and of her life experience. Having suffered major burn trauma in a gas explosion in her twenties, these injuries continue to be accommodated, and even celebrated, in her work.
“The dialogue in my work at present focuses on womanhood and the results, or lessons, of those experiences. Clay’s capacity to reveal hidden, sometimes ancient knowledge is an act of transformation.”
