Hence, ‘identification’ – more often suggested to me by the sculpture itself – raised all manner of issues that needed to be confronted head-on.   Almost inevitably, political, sexual, psychological, philosophical, and religious issues, were ‘seeded’ into the different sculptural characters (e.g. the clay-work that became ‘John the Baptist’ has a whole raft of religious notes attached for those of a Christian bent; while ‘Marilyn’ [and that dress] cannot, even in death, escape the sexual notes that were part of her on-screen persona).  

Always a political animal and despairing, too, of religious sectarianism and the murderous feuding between institutional Faiths, these ceramic figures have given my work a series of platforms within which I have been able to develop a number of issues (e.g. of gender inequalities, misogyny, love-hate, existential loneliness, violence, jingoism-and-nationalism, betrayal, the horrors of war, and mental health) that have long been concerns for me.   And, while I have no wish to thrust my beliefs and values down anyone’s throat, I do believe that my ceramic figures are entitled to be known for who and what they were ‘born’ to be.