Sandy Layton is a sculptor working mainly in clay. She lives and works in London and her work has been exhibited in numerous exhibitions in the UK and Europe.
She pursued a career as a psychotherapist before studying as a ceramicist. She went on to do MA degrees in Fine Art at Kingston Art School and in Ceramics and Glass at the Royal Academy of Art. Her work was short-listed for the Ingram Prize in 2020. She is currently taking part in the ‘Turps Mass’ sculpture programme.
Sandy ‘s work explores recurrent themes of time, memory and desire through materiality and process.
Her practice involves playing spontaneously with different forms, textures, and colours. It is through this process that unconscious emotions come alive. Initially the clay is very malleable but as it dries it alters, becoming firmer and less flexible. At different stages of the making process clay can be worked and shaped, which opens up endless creative possibilities and disappointments.
There are contrasts and connections in Sandy’s work. The strength of the girder shaped forms contrasts with the sensitivity of the more curvaceous and softer forms, while the textures and colours of the surfaces of the different elements form a counterpoint that is both a contrast and a connection. Sandy sees these tensions as representing an internal struggle between opposing and mutually dependent forces inside us all. The objects themselves, with their marks and their textures, exhibit not only their process of creation from raw clay to fired ceramics but also the maker’s state of mind.