Gavin Houghton

For Gavin, his love of drawing feeds into another of his creative pursuits – ceramics. He enrolled on an evening course in Lewisham shortly before lockdown and learned the art of slab building. ‘I wanted to make a set of decorative plates and this seemed like a good way to go about it,’ he recalls.

Houghton is mainly influenced by the Bloomsbury group, Picasso and Jean Cocteau, but he sources inspiration from anywhere and everywhere. When images resonate with him they may well end up on one of his pieces: a Jack Russell gazing expectantly from the centre of a serving platter, a figure with a knowing grin on the bottom of a teacup, or perhaps something more risqué, like two male lovers caught in the act adorning a decorative plate.