About
Nancy Main’s sculptural ceramics seek to give physical form and expression to the subtle nuances of human feelings experienced as we journey through life; in our relationships with one another and with the earth. Her new series ‘Vessel of Dreams’ reimagines the archetypal form of the ceramic vessel as a container for human hopes and rituals, moving from bright porcelain to dark smoke fired clay.
Exploration of the universal language of form allows an intuitive use of clay as a communicator of feelings found within the human body and the human experience, however fleeting or deeply distilled. The anthropomorphic concept of creating human life from clay has been embedded in many civilisations around the world since the earliest times. Through clay, humans look to give shape to the essence of life and make vital our experiences.
Nancy’s ceramics follow in this tradition. Rather than recreating the human form, they seek to embody and project shared human experience through the abstracted forms of malleable, impressionable clay; responding to primitive, wordless feelings. Often drawn to working on a fairly large scale, Nancy’s forms are soft with a skin-like surface, smooth yet imperfect with scrapes and variations; marks of imperfection and texture, much like the human body.
Nancy works from the Suffolk pottery studio and teaching space Yoxford Makers, which she founded in 2021.
