Artist's statement
I combine painting, reworked icons and marks, fine silver, 22ct gold and glass, through fire, to create modern relics.The processes and skills for producing enamel work are exacting, requiring technical expertise in design and construction of a piece, and also an understanding of chemistry and the exactitude of firing of enamel. In essence, enamelling is glass bonded to metal by the action of fire. Firing transforms the enamel and gives the whole process a feeling of alchemy. I use traditional techniques of enamelling in a contemporary context, and am fascinated by blurring the boundaries between materials, styles, times and thinking, values and perceptions.
Through the precision and complexity of the handmade object, I aim to balance opposing elements: the deliberate drawn quality of my lines in tension with the more fluid and unpredictable aspects of enamelling such as the subtle shifts and flow of colour emerging as it vitrifies, and by playing with and re-inventing symbols imbued with meaning for the modern wearer. It is in the variability and eccentricities of making pieces in series that things become exciting. For me, the maker’s hand is implicit in and essential to each piece, in contrast to the erasure of the individual mark so prevalent in the digital age