Description

Swimming makes me happy. I started swimming lengths after Christmas at the local pool, and now I swim for half an hour, three times a week.

This stoneware sculpture reflects the ease and serenity I feel in the water. One of the women who swims at the same time as me wears a pink swim hat and white goggles, and she found her way into this piece.

At the pool, everyone has to wear a swim hat, even bald men – it’s the great leveller. Swimwear strips everyone back: no fashion, no hairstyle, no make-up, no accessories. Just bodies, varied and beautiful, moving through water.

For an artist making figurative sculpture, it’s a wonderful environment – a place to observe the real bodies of people simply being themselves. I monotonously swim up and down the 20m pool, alternating front crawl and breaststroke. I prefer to swim slowly, to fully inhabit my body as I propel myself efficiently through the water. This stoneware sculpture came from that feeling.

This high fired clay swimmer sculpture can go outside as a garden sculpture. She is ready to hang on an ‘L’ shaped hook.