Kirsty Macrae

Biography

“My ceramics are an exploration of gesture, form, and colour. My work is strongly influenced by my background as a painter. I create work that playfully transforms the clay into a canvas, reimagining the landscape around me. I employ traditional pottery decorative techniques alongside mark-making usually associated with abstract expressionist painting to create lush, layered surfaces”. 

Technical notes 
”My work draws inspiration from the heritage of eighteenth-century English slipware pottery, using it as a starting point to create my contemporary ceramic sculptures and vessels”. 

The pieces are coiled using red earthenware clay. They are then painted with a palette of handmade slips using a variety of decorative and painting techniques, such as inlay, wax resist and action painting. I then biscuit fire to 1000 degrees and glaze with a variety of glazes to achieve complex and varied surfaces. The pieces are finally fired to 1100 degrees.