Community Spotlight: Bridget Macklin

This month, we’re shining a light on Take Two student Bridget Macklin and her thoughtful, landscape-led practice.

For Bridget, creativity begins with the land beneath her feet. With geology at its core, her work is shaped by a deep fascination with the natural world. She’s drawn to the layered, fractured forms found across England’s moors, mountains, cliffs, and coastlines, while also holding a strong awareness of the environmental challenges affecting these places.

In her practice, Bridget blends foraged wild clay and found materials into porcelain. This gives each piece its own colour, texture, and sense of place. She leans into experimentation, refining her work again and again, gently pushing towards thinner, more luminous forms that reveal their character the longer you spend with them.

More recently, she’s been reworking materials saved from earlier projects. Her recycling bucket holds a mix of porcelain, clay from different sites, and coloured slips once used in workshops. 

With each material at a different stage of dryness and maturity, the results are often unexpected, and beautifully so.

Care for the environment sits at the heart of Bridget’s decisions. Reusing these materials is one way she keeps her impact considered, while continuing to create pieces that feel distinctive, thoughtful, and full of life.

In Bridget’s words...

For many years, I worked as a teacher, specialising in supporting children who were struggling to thrive in mainstream education because of difficult experiences, temperament, or neurodivergence. It was hugely rewarding, but also very tiring. One day, while chatting with my own children, both of whom had recently finished university, I discovered that they were both earning more than I was in my teaching job. I was shocked that all my years of expertise and experience seemed to count for so little, and I resolved to do less of what drained me and more of what I enjoyed.

Around the same time, the art teacher at the school where I was working rekindled a love of art and creativity that had lain dormant since I was a schoolgirl. A few years ago, I retired completely and decided to return to university to explore the artistic side of myself.

Initially, I took a foundation degree at Bath Spa University. During that time, I discovered a love of clay and haven’t looked back. Since then, I have completed a higher-level diploma at City Lit College, London, and a master’s degree in Fine Art at Falmouth University.

I see part of my role as an artist as raising awareness and creating space for thoughtful engagement with the threats facing nature, allowing art to open discussion without apportioning blame.

My ceramics have been exhibited in galleries in Cornwall, Devon, and London. I have also shown work in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, and I am a member of the Cornwall Craft Association and MAKE Southwest.

A recent period of ill health meant that I lost a great deal of strength, and working with clay became difficult. In an effort to rediscover my love of other art forms, and to distract myself while I was unwell, I began exploring collage. That is what led me to Cordula’s Take Two course. I had no expectations of where it might lead, but I soon discovered that layering, image transfer, and cut-outs were all processes that intrigued me and that I had already been using, to some extent, in my ceramics.

As my health began to improve, I took Cordula’s ideas into the studio and started experimenting with them in clay. I am now exploring new ways to layer clay, create image transfers, and incorporate cut-outs. It is very different, but it complements the processes involved in working with paper. I hope that, in time, this will lead to a body of work built around a single theme, bringing together both paper collages and ceramic vessels.