Lately, my grandson has been painting.

He makes abstract compositions, and I love his casual confidence. He chatters away and sings while he paints. 

So what if he is only five years old. He has hands to hold a paintbrush, dexterity to apply the paint, and his own unique eye. 

I’d like to think that seeing my own paintings throughout his life has influenced him. When he was a newborn, he used to stare at my art on the wall, as his mother did when she was a baby. 

Maybe my work has influenced him in some way, but there is always something I can learn from him, too. His focused nonchalance, and joyous approach inspire me. 

Two 36×48 canvases in progress.

Sometimes pots break during the bisque firing. Usually because I haven’t allowed them to dry enough. If the bottom breaks out, I keep it. I glaze it, and then later, when I have extra room in the kiln, I’ll fire it again. It lets me try things with the glaze that I might not want to risk on an intact pot.

They go into the aquarium, and the fish make them their homes. I still get to display them in my home and look at them. It ties back into what I always say about shipwrecks. And imperfections.

I’ve said from the very beginning that I want my pottery to look old. I was inspired by the rock walls along riverbanks, with their lichen and mineral deposits. I looked at a lot of colonial pottery from New England, and find some of their characteristics surfacing in my own pieces.  I look at neolithic bowls and ancient Egyptian artifacts. Several of my new bottles/vases remind me of the “Baghdad Battery.” Others look like canopic jars or kohl pots. These influences mix with my own experiences and ideas. Obviously, my pots are contrived. I have to have a plan for what I am going to make.  Sometimes the clay seems to have a mind of its own, and brings surprises to the process of throwing clay. The glaze always brings surprises. In this way, I can look at my own work almost as an outsider.