Now I have finished my final piece for my Ceramics Masters where do I go? What do I do? How do I progress and how do I use what I have learnt?

Well I dont feel that the end of my Masters is the end in any way. It feels great to have finished it, freeing and liberating but it feels like finally finishing the tutorial for a new game. I get the controls to a certain extent, I understand the basic process. I can now go forward and become more proficient at the controls and how I use them. I can work out methods which suit only me, I can bend the ‘rules’ a little to achieve this, I can go my own way.

Before I started this course I was already an artist and sculptor but now with these skills a whole new set of pathways are open and that is exciting.

That is the beginning.

I have spent six years at UCLan now as a mature student studying Art and Design Foundation for a year followed by Fine Art BA Hons for three years and now the Ceramics Masters for the past two years. A lot has changed in my personal life in that time, for the better mostly. I am so very ready to embark on ‘real life’ again. To try to use my creative skills to eek out a living as a working artist.

I don’t just sculpt, I paint, draw and print too. I will go back to being multidisciplinary, I will try to exhibit and sell my work but through this I can also keep pushing acceptance of neurodiversity within society too.

I will certainly start applying now to ceramics shows, art exhibitions and galleries whilst also managing my own website and social media in order to grow an audience. I feel that my future lies in a porfolio career and that suits my own variability. I will happily work this way.

I will never stop making, it is part of me, I have always done it and will continue to do so forever more. It is how i express things I cannot put into words, there are feelings so indescribable that they have to find a creative way out and I will always allow them that passage.

But the very first thing I will do is one painting, I miss painting in oils so much having done none for the past two years that I am going to paint my biggest painting yet. The time spent doing that will be my congratulatory gift to myself!