Barbara Gittings
Barbara Gittings’s combination of the ancient techniques of Nerikomi and smoke firing, alongside her unusual modern shapes, places her work in a unique position within the field of Nerikomi ceramics
Japanese Nerikomi often features very regular geometric repetition, whereas Barbara’s work embraces abstraction and asymmetry while still referencing the geometric.
Her smoke-fired, Nerikomi Porcelain ‘Vessels’ are contemplative and sensual. They have a sense of calm and serenity which she aims will draw the viewer in – with a desire to touch and hold her pieces.
Barbara embraces inexactness and experiments in her process, blending precise technique with a loose and casual application. The elemental uncertainty of working with clay, especially the random and uncontrolled shifts and reactions that take place when creating pattern through the clay, inspiring her. She sees her work as the manifestation of a thousand transitions.
Fascinated by the geometry in nature, Barbara is particularly drawn to growth and random chaotic forces such as weathering, sedimentation and erosion that skew and distort the initial perfect symmetry. She is constantly exploring these balances between symmetry and asymmetry, perfection and imperfection, the line between order and chaos and the juxtaposition between control and spontaneity in her work.
Barbara suggests: “Nature can be enigmatic and one is instinctively trying to decipher its unknowable qualities. Images and patterns sink into the subconscious, to be released when one engages with the clay and the submerged information emerges to dictate the work in progress.
I’m drawn to irregular repetition, primitive mark making and soft, earthy colours.”
(Photography credit Bip Mistry)
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