I’m re-cycling this post because I love it x

Great Art is like a chemical reaction in the blood, sparking signals to swell the brain and heart with waves of love and wonder.  So it is with the ceramics of Fenella Elms.

Another feather in her talented cap: She never started her professional life as a Potter, working instead in mental health as an occupational therapist.

‘I’d always joked that one day I would become a potter.  And then ten years ago, for my 40th birthday, my husband bought me a wheel.’

She did an art foundation at Swindon College follwed a year later by a part-time HNC-level course in ceramics. Who knows what would’ve happened to a fledgling Fenella and whether she needed to treat down her other path first: She’d always enjoyed pottery at school but couldn’t see how to make a career out of it.  But the mature, newly graduated Fenella immediately started winning awards including  the Ceramic Review Award for Exceptional, Innovation and Challenging work at the Ceramic Art London exhibition.

Organic, living, breathing  her work crosses the boundary between manmade and nature.

‘The approach I make to porcelain isn’t so different to my psychoanalytic practice; It’s all about the subconscious , where things aren’t forced or contrived.  I do masses of preparation and drawing, then I put it all aside and wait to see what emerges.’

Her studio is based in Wiltshire, in  a converted milking parlour, which speaks of beauty, age, space and peace: ‘I enjoy looking at the world around me.  It’s nice realising that all the time I spent staring at the details of plants or ripples in water was for a reason.’

Laters, Kate x