Gestural Prompt
“At times the clay moves so effortlessly that my hands seem to follow, not to initiate, the movements of the clay. I notice an emotion in my hands that seems to connect them with my chest…”
Harry Remde from The Art in a Craft, 1975
In the last few years of my 30-year relationship with clay, I have been going through the process of leaving behind the ingrained suggestion of ‘functional pottery’. I have slowly learned to let the clay behave as it intrinsically wants to with no preconceived idea of what is being built, letting go of the struggle and partnering with the clay.
As with the expressionist style of painting and drawing, the clay form and surface become a form of nonverbal communication bringing out a form that has a feeling of gestural spontaneity.
The surface of the vessels is a second layer of language. The gestural drawing, painting and mark-making come without much thought.