KMA has worked with Su over the last few years. Initially, we introduced her abstract sculptures, which she produced in porcelain. I then discovered her figurative sculptures, and, as I was intrigued by their energy, I was keen to exhibit them.

Su Jameson invites you to respond to her sculptures and create your own stories from your experience with them. There is a deep narrative to her pieces that I was excited to explore with her.

Describe a typical day in your studio?

It depends on where I am in the process of creating. My studio is at the bottom of the garden, and so I can pop back and forth as I need. Generally, I work a full day, as often as life allows, believing that the simple act of doing will get me somewhere in the end. Waiting for the 'right moment' is a fallacy.

While I'm working, the radio is important in connecting me to the outside world, and inspiration can come from news articles or imaginative landscapes found through literature and music. I could be constructing and modelling clay pieces or clay slipping, and if the creative juices are not flowing, I turn to technical tasks; rolling out clay slabs, recycling clay or mixing slips and glazes. Being around the work usually brings something forth, but it can take time, and I may need to leave the space altogether for a walk or run, allowing me to see things more clearly on my return. I use an electric kiln, which enables me to set a programme. For a self-taught ceramicist like myself, this removes some of the stress. However, there is still considerable anticipatory energy when the moment comes to open the door.

Do you have a favourite time to work?

By nature, I work in waves of intense activity followed by more fallow periods of reflection. Ideally, when on a roll, I will work for as long as it takes and then I crash in a heap. However, my current circumstances of being surrounded by family working from home dictate a more traditional working day with us all coming together in the evenings.

Can you tell us a little about your creative journey?

Art was always what I loved to do and where my talents lay. But I was a fish out of water until a new school at 16 with a buzzing art department showed me it was a possible path. A foundation course followed, where I found my 3D voice, and then a 'proper' degree, to assuage parents' concerns before moving onto a more fitting post-grad sculpture year in London. Becoming part of an artist family in shared studios under the railway arches in Tower Bridge were some of my most fun creative years. I exhibited and was involved in community arts projects, but a financial decision to teach lead to a career in education for the next two decades. It was challenging and satisfying, but the pull of my own art practice became too strong to ignore. I had discovered ceramics whilst teaching, and needing a new challenge, I set about learning as much as I could through making. I finally decided to share my experiments in 2017 with an open studio event, and it was a great surprise to me to win Surrey Artist of the Year. Since then, I have increasingly enjoyed developing and sharing my work.

Do you use sketchbooks before you create your pieces?

After I left teaching, my head was full of others voices, and so I needed to work out what I had to say. Drawing through sketchbooks was my exploratory tool, and I return to them whenever I feel lost. Currently, I write a great deal, recording and formulating ideas, but the visual planning has been reduced for now. Although more of a gamble, I enjoy the energy that comes when I allow the clay and the moment to guide me within the parameters of an idea. The research is there, but subconsciously rather than dominating.

Your works give me an impression of other worlds and countries. Can you tell us why that is?

Although my work often stems from small personal stories, I always have an eye on the bigger picture and find many parallels with others experiences. I lived in various countries for most of my childhood, and the significant people in my formative years came from a rich cultural pot. Subconsciously this must filter through into my figures, which are not intended to be particular; however, memories and influences will be driving the nuances. I still love to travel, and although land and seascapes fill me with wonder, it is the people that I think about long after returning home.

Su Jameson: The Tongue is a Fire (detail)

I get a sense of community about your works, but equally, a feeling of distance and separateness. Can you say more about this?

I feel an affinity with those on the edges of society. We humans are, at once, loving and brutal, and sometimes it is the subtle reactions or rejections that are the hardest hitting. They sneak up on you and have the potential power to damage irrevocably if unchecked.

Some are quite happy alone, on the edges, and find strength there. For others belonging is everything, and no price is too high. But, sadly, for a few, the choice is not theirs to make.

Your forms represent an idea of strength, but the medium you use is fragile; why have you chosen ceramics are your primary artform?

The juxtaposition of strength and fragility interests me. We all have these qualities, with the balance between the two ever-changing. The medium of ceramics is equally complex. Clay is organic, temperamental; it has a memory. You have to treat it well, gently, lovingly almost - the results are unpredictable, exciting - the process frustrating and rewarding in equal measure. It is also a medium that I can manage with total independence, which is very important to me.

You tend to use earth tones as your palette; why is that?

Using clays that come from the earth, I want any additional materials to belong. In future, I may be interested in discordant substances; nothing is fixed.

Throughout the pandemic, we have been required to stay at home; what is your notion of home?

My family is my home, and I have been lucky to have them with me throughout the pandemic. When you move around a lot as a child, you soon work out that people are what matter, not places.

As human beings, we are all born unique, yet the contradiction is we strive to be accepted as the same and to belong. Do you see yourself as different or feel in the minority in any way?

I do. I was born with a limb difference and white-blonde hair in Trinidad in 1965, and everywhere I went, I was seen as an anomaly. People would be drawn by the 'golden child', but then would come the double-take, and the smile would fall. I always knew I was different. Loved and happy in my skin, the trips back to the UK powerfully reinforced society's prejudice and pressures to look and be normal or hidden. A form of cultural brainwashing meant that I increasingly felt the need to live behind a facade, never drawing attention to myself or my disability. It was not until my son was born that I could discard the prosthetic limb that I hated so much. Finally liberated, I am painfully conscious that it took too long. Recalling the unexpectedly powerful impact of 'seeing people who looked like me' in the public arena, I hope that greater honesty and openness will encourage acceptance and equality. Being different is fine. But feeling you have to hide it or that you are less because of it, is the problem.

Who last inspired you, and how?

Of late, I have spent a lot of time in my head, in an imposed isolation, creating an inward gaze, and current experiments are autobiographical. I usually am more outward-looking, and I value the inspiration that comes from being in the presence of other artists' work. Mona Hatoum, Rachel Whiteread, and Louise Bourgeois are a few whose works remain on my studio wall as a constant call to be honest, fearless, revealing the struggle.

What sort of works do you think you might be creating in five years?

It all depends on what is happening in the world.

Q&A with Su Jameson

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