Ready, Steady, Go
This is my first blog....I mean my first ever so I'm not at all sure about it. I am sure about my love of painting and drawing, of sculpture and making pots from clay. The latter is a recent development which I seem to be overtaken with at the moment, but like every good artist I'm going with this one. It all started with the left over clay from my sculptures...I started to play with it...loving the malleability and enjoying the resultant forms. I know an artists moves through phases but this seems to be a very sideways shift. Not that I have forgotten my drawing, far from it, it appears on the pots too!
There is a slight problem in that I don't have a kiln....only slight...no its a mega problem, but only one to be solved, I guess.
I find it refreshing to create a form without an idea of what it will be. I like this freedom and the fact that it is a great form of meditation, with the added bonus of having something useful at the end! I roll each coil out by hand and attach it in the time honoured way of pressing the coil into the previous one, both on the inside and outside of the pot. I smoothed the outside on this pot but kept the process visible on the inside. There is something very satisfying about visible process in the finished pot.
So different from sculpting the portrait from life...but that is so enjoyable too. I recently created a family of 4 sculpts. The models were not related. I will tell you all about the concept behind the 4, in another blog. The process is very intense but the result oh so satisfying, especially as you have the dual pleasure of getting to know the model and creating a sculpture too.
The intensity of sculpting from life is addictive and the process so intense that it wipes all other thoughts from your mind, leaving you exhausted but strangely elated,
