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.
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, we humans seek to give shape to the essence of life and make vital our experiences.
Nancy’s ceramics seek to follow in this tradition, whilst not aiming to recreate 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 generally soft with a skin-like surface, smooth yet imperfect with scrapes and variations; marks of imperfection and texture, much like the human body.
A recent series of work draws analogies between the natural and the human landscape. Inspired by Shingle Street, an area of shifting drifts of shingle near to her home in Suffolk, these pieces echo the strata of stones which form large curved swathes across the coast, enclosing lagoons of water.
Beautiful yet like life itself, with unpredictable currents, creating a precarious yet unique, precious environment that perhaps against all odds, finds an inherent sense of balance and equilibrium.
Nancy works from the Suffolk pottery studio and teaching space Yoxford Makers, which she founded in 2021.
