I’ve drawn and painted since childhood, loved the few art classes we were given in school and sketched cartoons for my classmates. In university I drew cartoons for the student newspaper and took both drawing and painting courses along with my drama major. Strangely, they had a 45 gallon drum of clay in the art labs, but nobody ever seemed to use it or be introduced to its mysteries.

When, a few years later, I finally got involved with clay, I found that plates and shallow bowls offered blank canvases on which to investigate the visual possibilities of glazes, and I explored various images, textures and effects.

I experimented with every glaze type and colour I could find, used every application technique I could think of – from brushing on stains and glazes, as in the above ‘Mountain Scene’ platter, to pouring and trailing liquid glazes over the surface. I loved the freedom the process offered and the abstract or semi-abstract images that could be created.

Many of the bowls and plates pictured in this section were shown in a large exhibition I held in 2001 at The Croft Gallery in Calgary, titled ‘Bowled Over‘.