Louise
Louise is a ceramic artist.
Her dad died in 1988. In subsequent years, she had three miscarriages and she has since lost a number of other family members, including her mum.
“My dad loved babies. He’d had four daughters and he really wanted a son. And I was very much a daddy’s girl: always helping him in the shop and going round the golf course with him in the holidays.
Josh, my eldest, was three weeks old before Dad was able to come and see him. I was embarrassed about breastfeeding in front of him - I remember doing it really discreetly. But I also felt really proud that I’d had a boy for my dad.
Hours later, Mum rang and said he hadn’t come home. We said, ‘Oh, he’ll be lost, you know what he’s like. His sense of direction’s terrible.’ But then later, we had a phonecall from the police.
He’d been found slumped behind the wheel of his car. The lights had gone green but he didn’t move.
For the first six months, I pushed it down. Not consciously - I was numb.
I just had to carry on. We’d just moved house and my husband was working long hours. I had a baby to look after and I was on my own a lot. So I went to the mother and baby groups. I went to the playgroups. I walked around like a zombie. I felt angry towards any middle-aged man I saw who was walking the planet when my dad was dead.
A lot of my friends were young and we were part of a church where sadness wasn't understood. I didn’t have anyone I could talk to. Looking back, it was so unhealthy.
And then there were the miscarriages. I only realised recently that I was on my own for all of them. And I was still numb - in survival mode.
There are lots of blurry things. So many details lost.
My first pottery teacher told me “Just feel the clay!” She had this broad Yorkshire accent. “It doesn’t matter what you make, just feel the clay!”
It was lockdown and I was spending more time in the studio. So I was feeling the clay and this figure just started happening, emerging. It wasn’t planned.
“I’ve got these memories and they’re going into the clay. It’s like my pieces are holding my stories.”
I realised I was exaggerating some of her body parts. I was giving her broader shoulders and a strong back. She had muscular arms, chunky legs. And I started to identify with her.
She was a little bit disfigured. She had scars on her back and her hands were down by her belly. And she had a hole there, in her stomach. She was looking down at that emptiness.
It’s a personal piece. It’s a dark one, too. I wanted to acknowledge those losses; those three babies.
It’s been therapeutic, for sure.
Pottery takes you into another headspace. It might sound a bit mystical, but it lets me tap into something inside me and let it out. When I make something, I’m putting a bit of my soul on show.
I don’t want to create a perfect object, or a perfect pot. Fragility and cracks and gaps - that’s more representative of life as I see it.
So I pinch the clay right up to the edge and make marks on it. I hack into it and cut out a door and wire it back on again with some random copper I found on the beach.
Because that’s how it is, isn’t it? Things happen. We just have to pick them up and work with them and they become part of us.
I look at pieces from ten years ago and I think I’ve come a long way in my creative journey. Personally, too.
Acknowledging how abandoned I felt when Dad died was the first step to putting that weight down. To healing.
It doesn’t matter if someone else can’t see what my work means. I know what I was processing at the time. And it’s definitely helping me make sense of those things.
I’ve got these memories and they’re going into the clay. It’s like my pieces are holding my stories.”