Forest Floor

Forest Floor Platter - Detail

It’s been a long time between posts on my website! 2025 has been largely taken up by extensive travel in our motor home across this spectacular country of ours to Western Australia.

It took a little while to settle at home and to pick up the treads of life again in Far North Queensland. Initially, I needed to reflect on the direction of my creative practice and decide where I want to go with it next. Ultimately, I have chosen to relax and wind back a little. So we have dropped back from three monthly markets at Mission Beach, preferring to attend on the first and third Sundays each month, and resting on the last Sunday.

I am keen to experiment more with the surface treatment of both functional wares and more sculptural raku works… and (!) to include regular updates here to involve my webpage and blog more intimately with my creative work.

Pictured is a detail of a platter, fresh from the kiln, carved with leaves and glazed with a new glaze. This is a part of a small group of functional items inspired by the forest floor and our season “Fall”. Here in the wet tropics, I have observed that the trees shed their leaves in Spring rather than Autumn. There is no spectacular change of foliage colour. Rather the new leaves push through causing the older leaves to fall, often in great flurries, carpeting the forest floor with fresh new mulch. The bush turkeys and the orange legged scrub fowls become active building their monumental nests with the fresh leaf matter. Different species of butterflies lay their eggs there too. It is a time when the forest bristles with life.