MJ Bonnett - Ceramicist, Painter and Sculptor

In my work I am trying to find the essence of the subject, be it a figurative, handbuilt animal, a still life, or a landscape of my beloved East Anglia. I have been working in grisaille for a while now to be able to school myself in deep looking and to practise the recently acquired skills of drawing and painting. During 2020 I produced and worked on a series called ‘2020 - The Year Indoors’. This was a quartet of domestic still lifes in grisaille which I intend to keep monochrome, one for each season. I wanted to explore the quietude and focus that the shutdown of normal life afforded me, I also felt the need to mark the passing of the year as time itself seemed unhinged and not subject to its own normal rules. Still life seemed very apt!

When I sculpt in clay I want to be able to feel life in the finished piece, whether a sacred animal or a prosaic pot. With clay I feel a connection to deep time and the very first artists who painted the animals of their environment or made models of them to garner success in their hunts, or to worship them - who knows? But the process of forming an animal from clay for me is an act of worship.