Fountain Fine Art

Clare Ferguson-Walker

I was born in Carmarthen in 1978, and have lived in Wales all my life apart from a brief spell in London. I have been passionate about art since early childhood, spending hours obsessively drawing and making plastecine models. I moved to a house with a pottery attached to it when I was 18 and spent much of my time there experimenting and falling in love with clay. I started selling my work in a local gallery and soon decided to expand on my knowledge base, and so enrolled at art college in Carmarthen and embarked on a degree in sculpture. After graduating in 2003, I met my husband Ben and soon our first child Poppy came along, determined to continue my art career, I successfully applied for grant funding and was able to set up a fully functioning workshop, from which I produce all my work in ceramics and my paintings. Last year I was able to move into bronze production, working with a local foundry. I also gave birth to my second child, a son Caspian.

Through my work I aim to communicate the human condition from as many angles as I can see. I often draw upon elements of folklore and mythology, as I believe that certain stories carry age old truths woven into our collective sub-conscious which often have moral, emotional and physical relevance, regardless of time period or cultural status.
I love the idea of taking a scene from my imagination and turning it into a tangible object, that way my inner self comes to life in front of me, and is shared with whoever wishes to look. The subsequent narrative which I see developing is the plot line of my attempt to rationalize this world and my existence within it. My work often deals with memory, loss as well as hope and the celebration of life itself. I have come to use different objects and creatures to represent different concepts and emotions within my work, thus I am building up a kind of visual alphabet of meanings.
I love working with bronze, I love the excitement of the foundry process and I like the permanence of the material. I know that after I am gone, there will be a little of myself immortalized in my sculptures.