Sandy Layton

Life is precious but precarious; paradoxically, an awareness of life involves an awareness of death. Paradoxes run through my work which is both static and fluid: geometric forms, composed of straight angular lines and planes, co-exist with soft curving loops that dance above and around the work.

My sculptures create an illusion of movement, or of a moment captured in time, as they appear to lift off the ground and gyrate. They are never firmly rooted but teeter perilously on edges or lean tremulously.

I create this sense of movement by looping clay strips above and around the work, softening the stark shapes and providing a counterpoint to the structured architectural forms. These strips of clay vary in thickness and are reminiscent of lines drawn with a soft pencil.

Making ceramics involves an inherent paradox, as clay undergoes a process of change, from a soft and provisional material through a highly fragile dry state to the permanence of fired ceramic.

The transformational qualities of clay remind me of my former career as a child and adult psychotherapist. When working with children I was trying to heal their fractured lives and instill in them a more hopeful sense of the world and their place in it. This process is visually expressed in my work as the loops encircle and contain the sculptures like arms, enfolding and protecting them as a parent does their infant.


The leitmotif of life and death running through my work is intimated by the use of shadows and reflections in the photographs, and by contrasting black and white backgrounds.