Maria's early creative training and work was in graphic design at a time when the industry was changing from drawing boards to computers. As graphic work became more computer based she realised she missed the hands-on act of making, a realisation that led her to ceramics, initially experimenting at home, and later to an MA in ceramic design at Bath Spa University. Since graduating she has exhibited nationally and internationally and now works from her studio in Frome.
Making vessels and wall pieces, and influenced by mid century art and design, her work embodies a minimal aesthetic. The pared back forms become the canvas for bold colour combinations which divide and segment the pieces to explore thoughts and ideas around connection, relationships, boundaries and division.
Her work as a graphic designer is a major influence - the qualities of material, techniques and even some tools have come with her into working in clay. The precision she learned when creating artwork on a drawing board combined with the organic nature of clay is the basis of the way she works in clay today. Line has always been a fascination, from a small child watching her father, a structural engineer, drawing perfect black lines on his technical drawings, to her own as a graphic designer producing artwork for print. Now she attempts to create equally perfect lines in three dimensions around a form. Lines she perceive as boundaries, containing and coming between, bringing together or separating, defining the form and the spaces both inside and out.
Her matte ceramic surfaces are inspired by the qualities of the papers she used to specify to printers, her process informed by the interplay between the two-dimensional and three-dimensional. Either hand-building from flat rectangular slabs of clay, or using colour to segment the surface planes of cast forms, her process is an exploration into the relationship between the geometric and the organic and the connections between two and three dimensions. Each piece is a balance between elements of chance and control and examining the connections between form, line and colour.
Maria has been collaborating with jaggedart since 2015.