11 January 2014

LAYERS AND TEXTURES IN NEW WORK



In my latest work, some of which is on show at the Mall Galleries near Trafalgar Square in London,  I make further explorations of texture against form, using layers of colour and contrasting marks, made with a soft wide brush and a fine needle. Washes of pigment over washes of wax coloured with pigment generate rich and complex surface textures.  The decoration relates to the shape of the vessel, but not quite as manuals of ceramic design prescribe, not just following the form of the pot, but sometimes observing it by going against it. The vessel is basically laterally symmetrical, but the decoration is radically assymetrical, and the handles do not quite match. There are layers of reference in these ceramics as well, to Italian maiolica drug jars, 1950s textiles, Picasso's ceramics and those of the English "Picassoettes", and in the odd handles to the damaged Gazelle Vase in the Alhambra, Granada.