A journey which started with the discovery of clay at school, but which may well have been preceded by my earlier engagement with sand, in a sand pit in the garden as a child in Holland. Hours of delight. Who knows how all this really works. I do know that I am here, now, enjoying an ongoing and happy, interesting, intriguing, rewarding relationship with this basic material clay, the earth. This material which through some sort of alchemical process can be transformed into the most exquisite manifestations. From a formless lump of clay into any form, rough, refined or elegant. It would have to be magic.
There are as many expressions of this material as there are people engaged with it. Practicing the art, the craft, from good to bad to totally indifferent. Engaged in this wonderful dance of earth, water, fire, spirit, heart and hands.
After my first engagement with, and introduction to, the material clay at art school the need to travel became very strong. A curiosity, as a result of studying the history of art and specifically ceramics, was awakened. The need to see what other cultures did, and had done, with this versatile pliable stuff. For eight marvellous years I wondered and wandered around the world observing the absolute magic artisans were creating with clay. From the very basic Indian food bowl to the imaginary and fantastical dreams of Gaudi’s architectural creations in Spain, with millions of expressions in between. In each culture I visited, stayed and worked, something was added to my ever growing store of artistic and ceramic information. Enriching my skills. Enriching my spirit.
Transformations.
In South America I discovered the absolute beauty of unglazed ware and got rid of glaze in my own work. In Greece I learned how to do without high fired kilns while still having a worthwhile ceramic experience. In Turkey I learned how to economically fire with wood. In Turkey, also, I found the most exquisite turquoise bowls, upside down, as a temple roof. The Pueblo Indians of New Mexico taught me the art of burnishing and firing with cow dung while in Scandinavia I learned the economy of high tech design and the appreciation of a simple form. And on and on, until after 8 years of travel and work I returned home. Fully Filled.
In order to make some sense of the incredible store of information I had gathered, I retreated into the Australian desert to see if there, in solitude, I would be able to wait with patience for all these experiences to settle down. During these desert/studio meditations I remembered some advice, “To start a garden, plant one herb close to your back door and tend it” Simple and wonderful. In the quietness of this desert environment, I also remembered a meeting with an ancient Pueblo Indian who told me, while pointing at the first moon, a silver bowl elegantly floating in a dark blue sky, “we call this the receiver”. He, inadvertently, had pointed a direction for me. The path of the bowl.
I made a simple burnished black fired bowl. I made many more and was off into a most magical journey. During the quiet revolutions of the wheel I remembered how, when I returned, I flew from Melbourne to Adelaide just a few days after the Ash Wednesday bush fires, which had devastated millions of square miles of the landscape I was flying across. I remember recalling, nose pressed to the plane’s window, how I had seen the most incredible landscapes all over the world, yet needed to arrive at home to see the absolute most stunning of all landscapes. The graphic expressions of a landscape burned and smoked. These images and experiences have motivated the landscape expressions of my bowls for many years. The bowl expressing the earth, the burned landscape its decoration. A concrete poem.
After many years of this work, during which numerous additional influences created many subtle changes I found myself once again, at this present stage of my artistic career, moved to move. To explore not necessarily more of the new, but rather to question the old. My own work in a totally new and strange setting. I decided upon a journey to Korea. The land of ‘Morning Calm’. The land of the most beautiful, subtle and intense ceramics expressions. The land to test my work. Self examination. I spend six months in Korea. I worked in a University Studio and taught that which I knew to a great many students and learned even more in return.
Back in the quiet solitude of my studio, I once again had to go through a time of quiet contemplation. Waiting for the mind, stirred by many intense experiences, to settle. For the many and excited/confused thoughts to clear. Slowly and in time, clarity arrived. And with it a subtly different approach to my work. A way of working which combined with the Korean influence of calligraphic patterns now created in my ceramic art an expression of poetry. Ceramic Poetry.
There is, of course, more to my new work then just the image you are able to see in the illustrations. Within these works my love for things Korean is contained. Simple but strong things such as the way goods are displayed in the market. The way Koreans look after, and care for, trees. Especially ancient trees. Their reverence for nature and specifically for rocks. Their respect for art. Their wonderful food. Their ethereal watercolour paintings, which for me are very closely aligned to their calligraphy. All these things and more, much more, have touched me deeply when I lived in this Asian country.
When sometime later, during 2004, I was emptying the latest work from my kiln the thought of: ‘I have finally arrived’ came about spontaneously, and to my own surprise. This after about 40 years of working with clay. I thought the work was right. I had achieved something personal with it. The work was beyond my wildest expectations, and was the result, after having been enriched with the various gifts of my experiences, of going back and re-examining the source. The source in which I found the pure pleasure of making beautiful things by hand, bowls in this case, and firing them in a simple manner and, while doing that, enjoying the pleasures associated with that kind of working.
Thus, after all those years, I am still attending the most basic expression of the craft. The making of a simple burnished bowl, fired with wood in the kiln which I built in my garden. However this time the bowls had not been enhanced with breaking and restoring, no etching of a design, no Korean calligraphy. Just expressing the story, as written upon the surface of the work, of both the making and the firing of a simple bowl.
Not long after the opening of the kiln took place, I attended a talk by Richard Perry, on the meditative qualities of the Japanese Tea Bowl. As part of this presentation I saw a bowl which, in Japan, is regarded as a national treasure. Its title was ‘Fuji-san’ Fuji Mountain. A simple and at the same time complex Shino bowl. Beautiful in its economic simplicity.
I recalled, during the lecture, that my initial work, some thirty years ago, was originally inspired by the bowls of the Japanese tea ceremony, which I had learned about as a result of my travels and interest in Zen Buddhism. All this came back to me when Richard mentioned the concept, illustrated by the Fuji-san bowl, of: ‘a good bowl leads the mind inward and outward’. It was this concept that had many years ago also created a direction, even though I did not understand this at the time.
It has always been my intention to create objects of a meditative quality. Now, as a consequence of attending that talk, I realised that I have been practicing my skills, and making the work, to achieve precisely that effect.
I feel that I, at the end of a seemingly circular journey, have now arrived where I started. With, at the start of this journey not knowing anything, and at the end knowing only that which is expressed in the latest set of fired bowls. A thing of beauty. At times I feel a bit like a tree, which finds itself all of a sudden, and to it’s own surprise, with blossoms and fruit. And the continuation of that journey, now becoming one of producing more fruits and, consequently, seeds. The seeds for more work. The seeds of meditation. The seeds of continuation. It’s that simple, It’s that complex.
The new work then, which I took out of the kiln over the last 3 to 4 years, provides the viewer with a stronger consideration of ‘the bowl as a meditative object’. A bowl to get lost in, a bowl to lead the mind inward and outward.
This work maybe best appreciated in stillness. Something our society, addicted to noise and speed, does not do too well. Contemplation, a way of looking, and considering, which is not a quality that has come with industrialisation.
In essence I hope to express, through this work, the delightfulness of that which exists, the pleasure of making beautiful things by hand and the expression of relatively simple skills to make refined objects.
Each bowl a step in the circular dance of life.
