Paula Armstrong Ceramics

Paula Armstrong Ceramics I create distinctive visually stunning ceramic sculpture for your home or office as well as teaching. I have heard too many people say, “I envy you.

I passionately believe that everyone has the ability to be creative and love teaching because of this. I get a kick out of seeing students’ faces light up when they see a piece they made fresh from the kiln that they love, especially when they weren’t expecting it to work. I’m just not creative.” including some students when they first arrive. Being creative doesn’t mean being good at art and craf

t. It’s soooo much broader than that (but I won’t go into that here!). For myself I love trying new techniques and pushing clay to its limits. I often get asked, “how did you make that?” even by fellow ceramicists. The infinite possibilities of clay as a medium appeals to my need to constantly evolve my work and my love of learning and challenging myself . Teaching adds another layer to that. I’ve been making ceramic sculpture for over 25 years and love to create work that speaks to the viewer. I aim to make distinctive one-off pieces that tell a story and draw the viewer in. I’m a firm believer that each piece speaks differently to different people and I love that. The conversations individuals have with a piece is why it calls them. The emotions, memories and associations brought to the fore are what brings a sculpture to life and reflects something of the viewer. When a piece connects on this level to find it’s new home, it makes my artists heart very happy. I always wanted to be an artist and as soon as I touched clay for the first time in school I fell in love. In those early school days I pretty much had the ceramics studio to myself and learnt mostly by failing and trying again but I was so enamoured with it I went on to do my degree specialising in ceramics. Since completing my degree I’ve had an eclectic career in the arts from running community arts projects to working in arts development in local councils but clay has always been a constant throughout. The opening hours listed are the main hours I work but I'm not always in the studio so if you'd like to drop by please call so I can be sure to be there for you :-)

Let's talk about money. Or more specifically — the lack of it, and the assumptions around it. 🎨Art is still widely under...
24/06/2026

Let's talk about money. Or more specifically — the lack of it, and the assumptions around it. 🎨

Art is still widely undervalued. Not by everyone — but enough that it shapes the entire ecosystem artists work within.

How many times have artists been offered 'exposure' as payment? Or asked to lead a workshop 'for experience'? Or had someone assume that because you love what you do, you shouldn't need to be properly paid for it?

And then there's the risk model for exhibiting. Many galleries and fairs now charge artists to show their work — booth fees, hanging fees, submission fees — with no guarantee of sales and, sometimes, less motivation for venue staff to actually sell. I understand sharing risk. I genuinely do. The economics of running exhibition spaces are hard.

But paying just to be *considered* — submission fees for open calls where you might not even get in — that one sits differently with me. You've paid your entry fee either way.

None of this is to say the people running galleries or fairs are villains. I actually do often submit to opportunities that have submission fees. The whole system is under pressure. But it feels like artists are often absorbing the lion's share of it, quietly, without complaint.

It's worth naming. 💛

I'd love to hear from anyone on the other side of this, curators or galleries, because I know there are reasons for the move towards these models.

Less than two weeks until Cambridge Open Studios! 🌿The most vivid things in this piece are hidden just out of view.Bulbo...
23/06/2026

Less than two weeks until Cambridge Open Studios! 🌿

The most vivid things in this piece are hidden just out of view.

Bulbous explores the negotiation between what is held within and what is allowed to be seen. The exterior swells and rounds as if the interior is actively pushing outward — shaping the outside while keeping the most delicate forms protected. The richest colours and the most intricate details only reveal themselves from specific vantage points, and only if you're paying attention.

The exterior becomes a kind of mask — not a lie, but a strategy. Sharing what's inside only under the right conditions, with the right attention.

I'll be showing this piece and others from the Potential Inside collection at Cambridge Open Studios this July, alongside the painter Karen Jinks at Stapleford Granary.

📅 4 & 5 July | 11 & 12 July
🕙 10am - 5pm
📍 Stapleford Granary, Stapleford, Cambridge
🎟 Free entry, no booking needed

Plan your art trail at camopenstudios.org 💛

www.parmstrongceramics.co.uk

Here's something I don't think gets talked about enough.The pressure — subtle, constant, financial — to make work that s...
22/06/2026

Here's something I don't think gets talked about enough.

The pressure — subtle, constant, financial — to make work that sells.

Not just makes, but SELLS. To a wide enough audience. At a price point that works. In a style that people immediately understand and want to live with.

And the thing is, that pressure is entirely reasonable. Art is how I pay my bills. I need people to want to buy it.

But somewhere between 'making work I love' and 'making work people will buy', there's a very easy line to accidentally cross.

You start to second-guess a piece. You soften an edge that felt important. You repeat a form that sold well last year. You notice your new work looks a bit like someone else who's doing well. And slowly — without ever making a conscious decision — you've drifted away from the thing that made your work yours.

I've caught myself doing it. And the work always feels wrong when I do.

The work I'm proudest of is never the work I made to appeal. It's the work I made because I had no choice. And that's the work that finds its people.

So I've decided I'm going to make 'Marmite' artwork; to consciously make work that I know some people are going to hate, because if someone hates it, someone else is going to love it - as much as I do.

Easier said than done when the bills are due. But worth saying.

Let me paint you a picture of a typical week as an artist.Monday: respond to enquiries, update the website, sort the acc...
20/06/2026

Let me paint you a picture of a typical week as an artist.

Monday: respond to enquiries, update the website, sort the accounts, photograph new work, write some social media posts (and then rewrite them), chase invoices, order supplies.

Tuesday: teach a workshop. Smile through the exhaustion. Love it genuinely because the people are wonderful.

Wednesday: studio time — but first, unclog the drain, fix the shelf that's been leaning dangerously for three weeks, clean the kilns. Then make.

Thursday: email inbox. Admin. Marketing. A phone call about insurance. Answer questions on the website. More emails.

Friday: try to actually be creative. Attempt to switch off the part of your brain calculating how many workshop bookings you need to cover next month's costs.

Nobody trains you for any of this when you study art. There's no module on cash flow, contracts, or what to do when your website goes down at 10pm on a Sunday. You just... figure it out. One steep learning curve at a time. While also being a parent, a carer, a sibling, a person with a life outside the studio.

I love being an artist. But I want to be honest about what it actually involves — because from the outside, it can look like a very different kind of life.

What parts of the business side do you find hardest to navigate? I'd genuinely love to know.

🎨 Something big is growing in the studio...And I mean that quite literally. My large sculptural piece has been growing a...
19/06/2026

🎨 Something big is growing in the studio...

And I mean that quite literally. My large sculptural piece has been growing and growing, and I could not be more excited (or slightly terrified) about where it's heading.

The plan is to show it — finished, fingers crossed — at my open studio at Stapleford Granary Arts Centre this July, alongside the incredibly talented Karen Jinks.

First 2 weekends of July:
📅 5 & 6 July
📅 12 & 13 July
10am to 5pm

Stapleford Granary Arts Centre, Bury Road, Stapleford, Cambridge, CB22 3PF

This is a Cambridge Open Studios event — so if you're exploring the trail this summer, come and find us! Drop me a message if you're planning to visit 🤍

🎨 What a wonderful event at the Cambridge Open Studios preview at Marleigh Sales Centre on Newmarket Road!It was a real ...
18/06/2026

🎨 What a wonderful event at the Cambridge Open Studios preview at Marleigh Sales Centre on Newmarket Road!

It was a real joy to be part of this exhibition — surrounded by genuinely talented makers and artists who are all taking part in Cambridge Open Studios this July.

If you haven't come across Cambridge Open Studios before, it's a brilliant countywide event where artists open their doors and invite people in to meet the makers behind the work.

These are my pieces on display — and there's plenty more to see at my own open studio in July too... more on that very soon 👀

Head to the Cambridge Open Studios website to explore all the artists taking part this summer!

10/06/2026

It's growing!! 💗

Little by little my big sculptures are getting bigger. I'm thinking that each one will eventually fill my big kiln all on its own and I can't wait 😁 It's been a long time since I built at this kinda scale and I'm loving it 😍

These are the next step of my 50 makes in 50 days challenge that I did for my 50th birthday. I made one piece every day starting from sketches and ideas that had never previously made it off the paper which I then combined and evolved into organic stack sculptures. When I got to the end of the challenge, making them big to sit in a garden surrounded by plants seemed like the natural next step. It took me a while to get to it but I thought they would be perfect to show at next month. Just need to get them made and safely through the kiln for the 4th July.... 🤞🫣😁

Something happens when you look inside this piece. 🌿You expect to be looking in. You find you're being looked at.Looking...
10/06/2026

Something happens when you look inside this piece. 🌿

You expect to be looking in. You find you're being looked at.

Looking Back holds a cluster of eye-like forms deep within — and that reversal is the hinge of the whole work. The viewer becomes the observed. The act of looking turns into an encounter.

The gaze from inside can be read in many ways: judgement, memory, curiosity, recognition — or the quiet, constant labour of adapting ourselves to fit what others expect. The eyes inside are like echoes — reminders that the past is never fully past, and that what we have lived continues to lean into the present and shape who we are now.

It's a piece that completes itself differently for every person who meets it. I write the first chapter or two. The viewer brings the rest.

I'm excited to be showing this piece and more from the Potential Inside collection at Cambridge Open Studios this July — with the fabulous painter Karen Jinks in her studio at Stapleford Granary.

📅 Saturday 4 & Sunday 5 July
📅 Saturday 11 & Sunday 12 July
🕙 10am - 5pm each day
📍 Stapleford Granary, Stapleford, Cambridge
🎟 Free entry, no booking needed

Plan your art trail at camopenstudios.org 💛

www.parmstrongceramics.co.uk

It's finally here — and I'm so excited to share this with you! 🎉Introducing Next Steps in Clay, my brand new online Zoom...
06/06/2026

It's finally here — and I'm so excited to share this with you! 🎉

Introducing Next Steps in Clay, my brand new online Zoom course for makers who've completed a beginners ceramics course and are ready to take their making to a deeper, more personal place.

This course came directly from a conversation with one of my online members — which feels like exactly the right way for something like this to begin.

Here's what we'll be working on together:

✨ Advanced hand-building techniques to expand your toolkit
🔁 How to embrace testing and experimentation (it really can be excellent fun — especially when you take the pressure off expecting particular outcomes!)
🎯 How to critique your own work honestly so your making keeps developing
🌿 How to define what success means for YOU as a maker — on your own terms

There are no set projects here. No "copy what I make." No single right answer.

Just you, your clay, and 30+ years of experience guiding you towards figuring out what YOUR making wants to be.

Because every maker is unique. And I'd rather celebrate that than limit it.

Book your place at https://parmstrongceramics.co.uk/product/next-steps-in-clay/ Just 8 places available!

Address

5 Rookery Place
Cambridge
PE289LZ

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