Danya Mayne

Danya's body of work delves into the ways that form, color and texture can serve as an outlet for fear and anxiety. She is interested in how ceramic materials are highly receptive to touch and how color can create an emotional response. She uses these components while making work to represent conflict in the world and within herself. In addition to making ceramic vessels, she uses painting as a form of physical thinking to map ideas and experiment with shape and color combinations. Her paintings, as preliminary studies, often lead to imagining new forms or recalling memories from which she draws her inspiration. While Danya's approach to painting is more intuitive, her approach to ceramics is more structured and analytical; once she has an image in mind, the making process becomes a challenge where she considers the technical problems and where she works to understand the materiality of clay. She feels the imperfections, in combination with the uncontrollable nature of clay, are not a deterrent but fuel her determination to explore new ways of making. While the repetitive nature of wheel throwing and abstract mark-making allows her to feel comfortable within the medium, she uses this skill to work systematically in fragments to create larger-scale works that challenge traditional expectations of ceramics. For Danya, making ceramic vessels is a deeply contemplative process that can ease tension and enable her to articulate emotions often provoked by unpredictability and ever-changing moments in life. 

Instagram Account: @danyamayne.art