Free form ceramic painting; (toxic ringworm)

I know what your thinking,
What a gross name.

That's ok, yeah it is gross , but so is clay when it's at the super squishy stage of life. This piece is from a chance composition made by sloppy bits of discarded thrown items.you might have noticed I have written about it before, but the change is the acrylic colour enhancement.
I chose a strong colour because I want the central bar to have the most gravitas, and the side parts to be exactly that- side parts. I felt like symmetry was important. My friend disagreed but that is ok.  She enjoyed the colour as it was ...

This piece has great little windows to see the shadows through and really sings off a cool white wall. The arch of the clay creates impressive shadows and it all neatly rests on a hook or nail.

It is one of the few pieces I decided I couldn't put up for sale.

What am I doing

What a horrible thing to think about.

What am I doing?
I can guess what it looks like to others.

There are so many ways to answer this question, so many moods that present ultimately the same end result - I do whatever because it makes me happy.
But that can't be right cause I'm sure there are ways to feel happy without making paintings or ceramic anythings. I could take things to make me happy, or eat things, or buy things. I could do nothing. but these don't make me happy so I guess that is why I don't do these things


I can say that I'm keeping myself busy until I die.

That's a morbid way to put it... but I do know I feel horribly miserable if I don't make paintings. If I don't feel busy, (entertained?), I fall into periods of feeling very lost and bored -> and that is no fun.

Because I'm psychotic. I like that, that sounds exciting, perhaps that is the best answer because I like it.

I would say that I'm looking to explore abstract expressionist paintings and the materials in ceramics provides a more interesting platform for experimentation, and that's a good reason , but why paint at all and not simply earn a plain life?
Because I wouldn't feel like I'm living.

That-sounds a bit sad too actually,

I would rather be content with the meaning I imbue into my life, than to question it. 
MY life means whatever I make it mean, so at the moment it is about making marks, moving paint, and experimenting with ceramics. 

Today I was asked what are you doing?. Why. Why. why, is making paintings what you do?  I take it seriously because I know I can't answer it and convince myself. It can be so Many reasons I make up, but when I listen to myself it's like an addict making excuses.
I'll find it one day. I'll find the confidence for an answer. 

But until then I'm going to publish my journal thoughts.

Trojan

Here I am playing with the question "what is a painting?"

Tania

My favourite teacher and friend Tania Rolland. (No offence Stevie B an Mdog Merran) this piece is for you. Why.. cause your awesome! And so is this :-)

It is s ceramic painting. Through and through !

Cone wars

This is CP (ceramic painting) Cone Wars detail. Those bright purples and greens are all Copper Flambe glaze layered with a simple white satin recipe, mixed with the white of the cones it sets off the orange of the iron wash. I am happy with the colours, there was a risk that the iron would be too dark or the brown would kill the pinks but it's totally nice the way it is.
Its a shame I has a hairline crack but that's a good reminder that everything is fragile.

Ogre tissues

What would a pile of ogre snot Look like ?
Who knows....
It could look like this

Babies in a blender

This was/is a stack of  rejected thrown bowls and cups that I sliced a quarter off to keep. I painted glaze faces on with an untested black glaze but it became mucked up so I just mixed it all together and made it areas of pattern and non pattern. I called it babies because they are things made by someone, like children, but rejected in a disposable way , disposable like passing joke or comments about awful kids. But mash it all together and it is a black mass of insult... I'm  not sure if I explained that right but you can always ask :-)

How excellent are the white spots in the blue glaze !?! I love this technique now...

Vaulkos chair

This chair was a treat I made myself because I had figured out what firing temperatures I preferred, one day I will put the top on like a mushroom and glaze it all together.... not yet. It's beautiful now. I don't want to spoil it until I'm bored with it :-)
There is a light blue run which I painted and it was a baby blue day glaze but at stonework it has created micro crystal surface and it's all sparkly and gorgeous :-)  it's like putting subtle glitter on a polished turd. So awesome

Persian spew

This piece is so gorgeous when you get your face right up close, there are do many fascinating aspects to it.
It was a earthenware dry glaze painting layers of slip, dry glaze, then clear.... I didn't know what to paint and so I was doing just lines in reaction the the confines of the frame... so the composition was very boring .... until I made a pool of lead glass magic!!!

Petey the unicorn had eaten a blue sky and  some dirt earlier that morning and when he ate too much, he left this little treat on a tray

No, but that's a funny idea.

I truly look forward to making more paintingsin this method with dry glaze pools and just letting it all go !

I can't wait for next year :-)

This piece became a "Persian" blue colour and after much deliberation I Hadz to name it after the colour it was !
it is Completely not intended to be offensive, I didn't even realize it might not be liked instantly until some visitors were put off by it. Well they hadn't seen Babies in a Blender yet...

WHat does a Unicorn Vom look like??

 

hrmm...

Whatever you think it looks like!

I would think it is a fantastical thing, that would last forever. A splattery mix of fun colours and materials. It would be ugly and joyful at the same time.

Would you like to see one?

I have made a few attempts to make my own splattery joyful things. What I really want to do is communicate joy. My kind of joy, because I dont connect with the generic joy you find in advertising. I want to make people happy. It is not an original concept, but Joy isn't really just a concept.

I make Ceramic paintings with glaze and clay effects fired at multiple temepteratures. My palette is freedom. Freedom from store bought unknown concotions of paint and manufactured limits. Freedom from traditional ceramic conventions of pots and bowls. I have made a place where I am free to make anything my imagination leads me to, constantly exploring fantasy. But not in the cartoon direct sense of fantasy, but the material possibilities of minerals and elements in powder form from our real world combining into unknown substances of beauty. Thats my kind of fantasy- pretty chemistry.

Ceramics is one of the unknown arts, often ignored by the general public as an art form. Sometimes I agree that its craft history and traditions influence it to the point that it really is not high art, but that does not mean it is not possible. Peter Vaulkos, an American Ceramic Artist of the 1970s, started a revloution when he made plates with holes in them and put them on the wall. What I make is a link in that growing chain. I love painting, but the limits I have found in the materials I have found limitless in ceramics. By hanging my paintings on the wall we can share in the timeless, eternal abstract expressionist joy of ceramic fantastic possibilities.

"We should remember that a picture -- before being a war horse, a nude woman, or telling some other story -- is essentially a flat surface covered with colours arranged in a particular pattern."

--Maurice Denis, Definition of Neotraditionism. Originally published in Art et Critique in Paris, 23 & 30 August 1890

(This version of the quote translated from French by Peter Collier for Art In Theory: 1815--1900 edited by Charles Harris, Paul Wood & Jason Gaiger, page 863.)