Jeni Westcott

Empty Vessels is the atelier of ceramic artist Jeni Westcott, based in Montalembert in the Poitou-Charente. Jeni and her husband Andy moved to France in this year, having decided to change their life; Jeni changed career from IT Manager to her long term art interests, and Andy gave up arable farming in Rural Buckinghamshire to become a trainee builder. They moved into what was their holiday home (and major renovation project for two years previous)… it is still a renovation project! Moving to start up a ceramic workshop meant some more serious work on the “atelier-to-be”, and now a derelict “spare house” has been converted to a large, light and airy studio and office.

Jeni works mainly in stoneware and porcelain, but sometimes in earthenware, fired in one of two electric kilns. She trained as a fine artist and worked as a graphic designer prior to concentrating on her IT management career. Ceramics has been long been a particular interest and she has trained and worked with it for three years. Her work is mainly hand-built, and she is interested in pushing the clay to be as fine in thickness as it can be. Her work is influenced by natural form, sinuous curves, and colour, trees, leaves, water and the colours all around us in Nature. Jeni still uses her graphic design and brushwork skills and likes to integrate this with the 3 dimensional quality of clay. She also produces figurative sculpture pieces, and commissioned tile and mural work.