Why I create
Clay, chaos, technique, and the daily discipline of making things.
Do people assume artists are driven by emotion or sentiment? because that’s not how it is for me. I create because I simply must — it’s part of who I am: practical, hands-on, a problem solver, and always looking for the next challenge.
I grew up surrounded by art. My mother, Gloria Muddle, is a successful Australian watercolour artist, and from an early age I saw art not as a mystery, but as a discipline. We drew, painted, experimented, made a mess, and tried again.
Art wasn’t precious — it was normal.
Ceramics entered my life when I was sixteen. One of Mum’s friends taught me the basics and declared I was a natural. Naturally, being sixteen, I promptly wandered off to try everything else. Over the years I explored calligraphy, watercolour, oil portraiture, graphic design, caricatures, and later fell in love with digital art. All great skills to have — but none of them gripped me the way clay does.
Ceramics is not a glamorous medium. It’s physical, repetitive, messy, and relentless. There is washing, cleaning, recycling, kneading, firing, fixing… and then firing again. Failures happen almost daily. A good kiln load feels like a small miracle. But the possibilities are endless, the variety among potters is unbelievable, and the learning curve is beyond achievable. I will NEVER conquer it or “finish,” and so I will never be bored.
Ceramics is like life — failures are the moments that teach you the most. So embrace them, dust yourself off, and try again with your new knowledge of what not to do next time.
When ceramics works, it’s because you’ve earned it. The discipline itself is the reward.
My inspiration comes from many places — textures, people, form, structure, and pure curiosity. Our culture is so full of “stuff” that we’ve lost touch with value. I want to make things that take real time and effort, things that can be considered precious (hopefully) in an ever-increasing ‘mass-produced products’ world.
