I found by connecting with the natural world, by looking after the land and growing beautiful plants, medicinal teas and encouraging beneficial insects into my garden it began to ease my mind (as I see gardening as a quiet protest) it is also a symbiotic relationship, not only do I have a beautiful garden that encouraged bees and other insects, but I also use and honour the plants in my clay work.

I have been communicating my feelings through the therapeutic medium of clay by capturing the beauty of nature by printing leaves and grasses into clay to make tiles, pictures and jugs. My pieces have simple leaf designs and are usually coloured with blues and greens.  I aim to create a space to pause and for our thoughts to evoke a feeling of connection between the plants and us, and you can help do this too by learning this technique.

This technique is all about the leaves or grasses I choose to print and rolling them into a thin slab of clay. The best leaves are ones that have really pronounced veins like sage, fennel, dill, strawberry and yarrow. If you don’t have a garden you can often find some growing wild. I love to walk in the countryside and in the summer months, the hedgerows and meadows are full of grasses and rushes. I am especially fond of these as they print really well and you can use them when they are dry again and again for multiple prints. I especially like couch grass, meadow grass, Barren Bromegrass, my favourite is actually a rush, not a grass called sharp flowered rush.