Australian in France making poetic clay stories inspired by nature
Biography
Singaporean‑born, Australian ceramic artist now based in Lyon, France. I create poetic clay stories in stoneware and porcelain inspired by nature and shaped by a life of transitions. Before ceramics I was a trained medical doctor, with 20 years of watercolour experience and training in engraving. Immigration taught me to let go of the roots that once defined me and to embrace and redefine new roots, in a new culture and country. Clay became a quiet redirection for me.
Artistic approach
I am a ceramic artist profoundly shaped by my former life as a medical doctor and changes in culture and country. My lived understanding of vulnerability, repair, and resilience has made clay a medium for healing and transformation. In each clay body lies a narrative in which nature becomes a metaphor for renewal and repair — this forms the singular voice of my artistic practice. The elemental forces of nature have always been my main inspiration. Water and sky—ever changing, omnipresent, and ephemeral—echo my Australian heritage and the wild beauty that formed my earliest sense of self. I see nature in vivid colour, it is more than raw emotion — it becomes a therapy in itself. At the heart of my practice is a search for quiet illumination. Through colour and movement, clay stories become a conduit for wellbeing. Nature becomes one with emotional memories, my dreams and fragments of an imaginary inner world where tenderness, resilience, and wonder coexist. My work invites a contemplative encounter with nature’s capacity to heal, transform, and reconnect us to our deeper landscapes within.
Techniques and supports
My works in stoneware and porcelain emerge through a slow, meditative process that combines wheel-throwing and/or hand sculpting and repeated surface interventions. I paint, sgraffito, carve, incise, and refine the surface until an inner coherence reveals itself. Imperfection, asymmetry, and luminosity become metaphors for the emotional and physical metamorphoses that shape our human experience. Alongside ceramics, I also create etchings. Drawing is an essential part of my practice — a parallel process that informs the gestures, rhythms, and structures of my sculptural work. The etchings and ceramic pieces often echo one another, forming a shared visual and emotional vocabulary.