"Unrequited Enmity"
20"/51 w x 37"/94cm h 11"/28cm deep
Medium c/6 stoneware, glazes and lusters @ c/018

Animal imagery is powerful as symbol for the human psyche. The animal image is symbolically surrogate. Animals have always enthralled me.  As a child I drew animals obsessively, drawing them, in fact, before I began talking.  Growing up in Texas in a family of outdoorsmen, I learned to hunt and fish at an early age.  Living in south Louisiana for 22 years played its part. These experiences with animals, along with the study of human and animal figures in historical and contemporary works in ceramics, which is densely rich in such imagery informs my work.  Among these influences Pre-Columbian classical Moche pottery was early and has been enduring.  Almost as important has been the sculptures found in other ancient cultures around the world: from the Qin and Han dynasties in China to early Greek and Etruscan works in terra cotta. 

For much of my career I have been making social and political commentary work, often also involving eroticism. In 2003 I began work that was responsive to the misguided policies of my government.  As the Republican senator from Missouri, Charles Schurz said in 1861, “Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right, when wrong to be put right.” I have been trying through my work to do my part. However in 2006-07 I returned to an earlier and abiding interest in animal form and imagery with a new, for me, interest in integrating the vessel, namely the teapot, with the figure.  The pot incognito you might say. This work offered a respite from the polemical and resulted in a solo show of this work in April 2007.

Among artists in my own time I have admired the work of Giacomo Manzú the most, particularly for his handling clay as an expressive material.  I have tried in my work to exploit the plastic quality of clay in such a way that if a word analogous to “painterly” existed then “clayerly” would describe my work. 

The I Ching  says," The most perfect grace consists not in external ornamentation but in allowing the original  material to stand forth, beautified by being given form.

This cast of the I Ching is as close to a “truth” as I know about my work in clay.   I want my work to always reveal the direct evidence of my hand.  I believe  that making art and understanding art requires intellectual  rigor, yet is fundamentally a somatic experience. I want the clay to “stand  forth” recognized for what it is while it also conveys other realities.