This Terrain
$300.00
Artist: Natasha Martin
Medium: Clay, slips, stains, washes
Artist Statement:
As someone who has navigated mental health challenges since adolescence, I’ve spent much of my life feeling ‘out of place’. Ceramics has become a somatic, meditative practice — a rare space where my mind finds stillness. Place is not only where we stand. It is where we feel understood. The vessel, This Terrain, explores the body and spirit as landscape — territory that asks something of those who approach it, and the longing to be truly known by another. To, at last, find someone with whom you do not feel out of place.
Inside the vessel, a poem in underglaze:
my body,
my spirit
are landscapes waiting to be explored
by one with the fortitude, patience, and curiosity needed to reveal their treasures.
The vessel is hand-built using a hollowed gourd as a form for the base, with slab-constructed walls. This cross-material collaboration embraces imperfection as beauty. The exterior slips and stains are not decoration; they are record. The markings echo how experiences of love and loss imprint upon us, the way land holds the evidence of everything that has moved across it. To hold this vessel is to hold the question: what does it take to truly know a place; or a person? This vessel is both self-portrait and quiet invitation. A place waiting to be found.
Artist Biography:
Natasha was introduced to ceramics as an art form in the mid-1980’s — while living in Lahore with her family — through a formative encounter with esteemed Pakistani potter Sheherezade Alam. This artistic connection deepened a decade later when Natasha briefly studied under Alam in 1997 after discovering she had relocated to Toronto.
Following a twenty-year pause, Natasha rekindled her interest in ceramics in 2019 at Inspirations Studio — a social enterprise supporting women and non-binary individuals navigating poverty, marginalization, and mental health challenges. When the pandemic hit in 2020, a meaningful gift of a pottery wheel from friends for her 50th birthday enabled her to establish a home studio practice.
Natasha’s evolving body of work has gained recognition in juried exhibitions including Workman Art’s Being Scene 2022; Northern Contemporary’s 2023 Holiday Show and Sale; Wychwood Barns Art Market Nuit Blanche 2024; Arts Etobicoke’s Emerging Artists Over 30 2025; Museum of Dufferin Earth and Fire Festival 2025; FUSION Clay and Glass Connect Online 2026; and National accessArts Centre Explosions of Curiosity 2026. Her first solo show is currently on exhibit at the Art Gallery of Burlington until May, 2026 as part of their Community Generator program. Natasha’s work was recently selected for the inaugural 2026 Henry Goodman Exhibition for Emerging Artists, and Yellow Studio (Cross River, NY) Hold. She was featured in
issue 63 of UPPERCASE Magazine’s Fresh Talent section (Oct – Dec 2024), and maintains active memberships with the Burlington Potters Guild, Toronto Potters, FUSION Clay and Glass, and Craft Ontario.
In 2025, Natasha received a Toronto Art Council grant to program Surface Stories Collective: a ceramic surface design workshop series for non-ceramic artists. The project prioritizes participation from artists from equity-deserving communities and will culminate in a group exhibition in July 2026.
A neurodivergent, queer, French-Canadian, Natasha is actively reconnecting with her language and heritage while examining her position as a settler on colonized lands.
