Marita Kohl at the Cape Gallery

Foremost in my work is the need to create, the joy and satisfaction of making. This is related to an attempt to speak - to have a voice. It is a rather cumbersome way to speak, "in clay", that is.

What I wanted to speak about - to speak from - is the awkward, the quiet, the vulnerable, the innocent, the barely formed, even clumsy.

So much of our culture is brash, crass, noisy, smooth and slick. That doesn't encourage us to touch the open, unformed space within, from which we have a natural respect for all life, nature and people.

Most of these works are formed by hand: coiling and pinching, leaving dimples behind - the fingerprints of the process. The shapes grow slowly and I stay attuned to what happens in the making. The forms sometimes shift and change again in the firing to 1280°C.

Along the way, ceramic creations translated into paintings. They are an extension and further exploration of the works in clay. They inform each other and sometimes are joined together - an awkward relationship, perhaps. For according to my motto: 'awkwardness has beauty'.

Marita Kohl.