On a wintry day at the end of January intrepid Rick Ross brought his old friend Eric out here for the day. Just the three of us painted plates so I felt comfortable working alongside them. Normally I’m a bit shy to paint – potting with others watching is OK but painting requires concentration.
Those pieces were finally fired when I filled the kiln with last weeks’ plates, and I took them all out on Thursday. So first I’ll post photos of Eric’s, Rick’s and my one plate. While I was unloading the kiln Marlene came out from Vancouver with three which she’d taken home, like me, to paint quietly alone. She put some finishing touches of colour on her mainly black, white and grey whimsical images.
As soon as the pots were cool enough Al took our usual professional-looking photographs and I packed them all up, and bless her, Marlene took them all in to the Western Front. So we’ve managed, in spite of various weather-related postponements to get the five donation coupes in to the Front in time to be included in the Gala Auction online catalogue. I’ll post that in the next blog.
In the earlier painting session Eric simply chose two of his rimmed plates and his familiar palette of white, black, red and turquoise with some yellow on one. I wonder how many of his plates exist now? But he does like to have them available as gifts.
I’m also including a photo of a large platter he took home and spent five days painting more painstakingly and Mina brought out last week. It will be a donated presentation piece next Saturday.
Rick was one of the earliest Raiders, and brought out a plate from that visit with a plan to do something similar again. With ceramics in mind, he also found some images of ancient Chinese Tang Dynasty ware as inspiration. Those old sculptures of horses and other forms, as well as fine vessels, were lead-glazed with running areas of copper, iron, manganese and sometimes cobalt, producing mainly amber, green and creamy white ware.
Those are the colours Rick applied first and then, on that, he drew French handcarts in a witty art world pun.. ‘Faux Cart’. I love it! After completing two nice platters he ended his productive day with a squarish ‘Plate Full’. I hope he’ll be pleased with the results of his ‘Raid’.
Having been invited to be part of the group donating a plate each for next week’s Gala Auction I chose to use a leather-hard red clay ‘coupe’ and paint with my familiar coloured slips. The result is an angular pattern with colours that aren’t too wild. All five plates will be the same size and shape, but quite different from each other.
