A marine scientist who turned to clay.
I make ceramics inspired by the Arctic – the landscapes of ice and water I spent years studying as an oceanographer.
My work translates those frozen, rapidly-changing places into clay. Vessels and sculpture that hold something of the fjords, the sea ice, and the quiet, persistent wonder of the high latitudes.
I work from a small studio on the Cowal peninsula in Argyll, on the west coast of Scotland – a place of weather, water and long horizons that continues to shape what I make.
Drawn into the pulse of the ocean system.
I trained as a marine scientist in Scotland, at the Scottish Association for Marine Science. It was never really a plan. I never had a plan. But as a young adult I was drawn into the pulse of the ocean – its vast rhythms, its vulnerabilities.
The oceans are incredibly complex systems that we understand far less than we think. From drifting seaweed to singing whales, from parasites clinging to fish farms to the slow churn of deepwater currents, the fingerprint of human activity is everywhere. We’ve altered the currents, frayed the food webs, scattered plastic into every layer, and even changed the chemistry of the sea itself.
North, to the ice.
My path eventually led me north. I studied the physics of ocean circulation – how water moves, carries heat and salt, and shapes the climate. I traced retreating tidewater glaciers by satellite and travelled into the fjords each melt season to observe them firsthand.
Beneath the icy surface, we launched submarines to follow plumes of freshwater unravelling the glacier fronts. I watched colossal slabs of ice calve into the sea. I watched a starving, mud-soaked polar bear wander into town, desperate and out of place. The Arctic was heartbreakingly beautiful – and deeply unsettling.
A quiet refuge that became the work.
Over time, it became difficult to reconcile the urgency of the data with the inaction it so often met. And so I turned to clay. At first it was simply a quiet refuge – a way to get out of my head and into my hands.
But slowly, inevitably, the Arctic seeped into the work. I found I couldn’t make anything else.
Argyll, Scotland
The studio sits on the Cowal peninsula, where sea lochs meet hills and the weather shapes the day. Living and working here – in a landscape of water, mist and shifting light – is itself part of the practice.