In creating my hand crafted vessels, I'm motivated by a desire to attach joyful artistic expression to elevated functional form. Drawing heavily on the traditions of botanical illustration and colonial histories I harness the expressive power of fruit and floral imagery from remnant early settler’s gardens. I view the traditions of utilitarian ceramic vessels within a broader concept of functionalism, relating my forms to pieces that were used in daily domestic rituals of the past. By exaggerating the scale of these forms, I question their mundane status and suggests the objects of daily life deserve prominence and position as items of beauty. My vessels, loosely based on early colonial objects such as water pitchers, basins, cups and mixing bowls, are built by hand using the ‘coiling’ technique. I transfer the image, or parts of the image onto the pots by drawing directly onto the bone dry, unfired surface using a lead pencil. Ceramic stains and coloured oxides are then applied in much the same way that watercolours are used, building up layers of soft colour wash. Recently, I have added weeds like the blackberry bush to her vocabulary of quince, figs and pears. The meanings behind these motifs are not given, rather they gain associations for the beholder that are built up over time as they, and the vessels that bear them, are incorporated into the fold of experience and memory. By depicting scenes taken from the life cycle of a chosen plant – bud, flower, spent flower, fruit and occasionally the pollinating insect – I intimate themes of the seasons of life to which everyday objects bear witness.