Sally Fitchard is a ceramic artist living and working in Staffordshire. Her practice is rooted in the figure, where abstraction, movement and character converge to create busts, statuettes and vessels that feel both recognisable and open-ended.

Clay first found Sally in the pottery classroom of her old comprehensive: a light-filled, friendly space where handbuilt figures emerged alongside a sense of focus, curiosity and possibility. Yet art became, for a time, the secondary option — a narrative shaped by academic expectations and one that remained unchallenged for decades.

In 2019, Sally returned to clay. Almost immediately, those early memories came flooding back, and with them a profound sense of having found something that had never really been lost.

Today, sculpting is an interplay of intellect and emotion: decision-making, problem-solving, instinct, frustration and discovery. Her figures are often abstracted but remain intelligible, deliberately resisting a fixed narrative. Instead, they invite speculation — a story to be discovered, much as we discover one another.

Through exhibitions, workshops, residencies and interactive work, Sally now extends that sense of connection beyond the studio. For her, clay is energy made tangible: a route back to curiosity, joy and a life fully inhabited.