Natalie Bessell

Shell Face VIII

10 × 5 cm

glaze and ceramic

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About the work

From Natalie Bessell's Shell Faces series. A small hand-built ceramic wall piece with a ruffled, shell-like edge. The face is drawn into the clay in fine lines, with closed eyes that blend into the folds. The glaze pools in pale blue, white and soft peach over the dark red-brown clay. Small enough to tuck into a gallery wall or hang on its own.

About the artist

Natalie Bessell (b. 1992) grew up in San Diego, California and has lived in Australia since 2021. She is a multi-media artist, with a focus on painting. Featuring figurative and abstract elements, her recent work primarily involves oil pastels on wood and painted glaze on ceramics. She draws inspiration from her life as a new mother in a semi-rural beach town on the Mornington Peninsula, in the outskirts of Melbourne. Themes of nature, fertility, motherhood, and femininity have pervaded her work both before and after she became a mother. This reflects her more general fascination with the intersection of that which is ordinary and that which is magnificent.

photograph- Bri Horne

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