01/05/2026
I realised I have forgotten to take part in week this year, so here is a small introduction for those who don’t know me yet, or who have recently joined.
I haven’t been a potter all my life. I grew up in the Western Pyrenees, surrounded by vast, shifting landscapes. I spent my time in the mountains, trekking in the summer and skiing through winters, finding beauty more in mathematics and physics than in art.
I followed a fairly classical engineering path in France, with two years of classes préparatoires and three years of engineering school. Somewhere along the way, I also chose to study Japanese. At the time, it felt like a quiet curiosity, but it stayed with me.
I had a brief moment of glory as a civil engineering intern for TML, working on the piercing of the Channel Tunnel (maybe a sign of what would come later), then spent a few years as a project manager in infrastructure consultancy. Alongside that, I began exploring mixed media, creating abstract paintings using organic materials I would make myself. Potato starch, flour, aubergine skins, coffee, tea, and natural pigments formed my palette.
Later, using that same tunnel I briefly helped piercing, I moved to the UK, where I raised three children and renovated four homes. At that time, I was still working with my hands, but in different ways. Painting walls and children’s faces, kneading sourdough rather than clay.
My path to ceramics wasn’t direct, but it feels continuous. I have a mind that needs structure and seeks spontaneity at the same time. Clay allows both. I revisit traditional forms through that tension, and my work rarely follows a single path.
There is also a quieter thread running through it all. Those early Japanese classes stayed with me, and over time I began to notice resonances between the landscapes I grew up in and those I encountered through Japanese culture.
I often think of a liquidambar tree in my mother’s garden, which I watched closely as a child. Its slow transformation through the seasons, reaching a quiet intensity in autumn. It became a way of noticing time passing.
To be continued in the comments…
