Rebecca graduated from Plymouth College of Art in 2015. Her work is part of the Plymouth in Practice exhibition currently showing in the Museum’s Entrance Gallery.

Based in England’s South West, Rebecca’s surroundings, especially the coast have had a great influence on her work. She has been working with clay since she was 15, completing a Diploma in Craft Design followed by an HND in Ceramics and Glass at Plymouth Collage of Art. During this time she made individual hand-built ceramic pieces that celebrated the form. This vessel based work was often left unglazed, in its natural state or smoke fired. It was sold through shops and galleries across the U.K.

After a break from making, Rebecca returned to the Plymouth College of Art for the final year of a BA (Hons) ceramics degree course to re-examine her practice. Her love of ceramic material has been renewed and deepened and she has also found a new direction to explore.

In the collection of work for the exhibition Rebecca considers the crude beauty in the natural behaviour of clay. Her work is concerned with encouraging the natural properties and reactions of the clay used – seeking to allow the material to be itself without having to conform to a view of what is considered to be perfection within ceramics.

These porcelain pieces follow on from her degree work, exploring a finer quality of these reactions. With the porcelain she has been led by the clay – not only in the final forms but how the edges are created and finished. The purity of the porcelain remains but these pieces also celebrate the make up and the more eccentric properties of the raw material as well.

Rebecca’s work has a fragile, organic quality; eggshell like and finely layered but there is also a strength and boldness to the forms that are reminiscent of fossils or complex rock formations, lending them a simple, natural beauty.