The earliest influence was of my family garden, decorated with discarded and cracked household pottery and items that had all been carefully placed by my artistic mother. I have always been attracted to embellished and painted surfaces and love not only bright colours, patterns and contrast but also texture and natures palette. It is this attraction that informs the very basis of my mosaic practice. By the positioning of often disparate pieces to create an image or a pattern, I draw upon a very primitive aspect of art.
For me, mosaic speaks of permanence, colour, durability, endless variety, unlimited scope, surprise, reinvention and, occasionally even enlightenment. I strive to create an artwork that displays the varied colours, differing textures, deceptive lustres and infinite variety that exists with ceramic pieces, glass, metal and the earth’s stones.
Very often these pieces are from discarded broken dishes or charity shop finds that are in a continual loop of recycling until they finally fail or end in landfill. I may use gold Italian glass Smalti mixed with road gravel collected on my morning walks or rusted steel with Italian marble. The search for my materials is continual and intriguing. Whether I use commercial china, hand glazed pottery or imported tesserae, I am always looking to combine the colours, shapes and textures to present a new understanding of their worth and create a different view of the various relationships.
My images mostly come from the natural world, but I also enjoy the absorption of an abstraction, where colour, form and line can be an end in themselves. Within mosaic, the term is andamento; the visual flow and direction within a mosaic which is dictated by the placement of the pieces or tessera. I create pieces that invite/require the viewer to explore not only the subject but also the structure and materials; to see these pieces in a new light and to give the material a different worth by its application in my art. Mosaic is endlessly flexible and in encouraging the combination of different techniques and materials, gives the viewer and the maker, the opportunity to realise a different perspective.
Marg was attracted to the mosaic medium not only by the colour, the patterns and the versatility of the art form, but also by its durability and seemingly endless variations. She feels a real affinity with the process that creates a meaningful image from so many dissimilar pieces: an image that is drawn by the careful arrangement and placing of each tessera in relation to the whole. Retirement has provided that other essential element for art practise – time.
Andre Leroi-Gourhan, 1911 - 1986