Jack Doherty / Ceramic Artist
Artist Statement From the idea that history, time and tradition can be a dynamic and changing force, I consider our need for clay objects and ask questions about their changing role in a contemporary world. I look at the ways people made things before art or craft. For me, the concept of function is ambiguous and multi-layered. I make sodafired porcelain forms that contain the qualities of art and utensil. Somehow, the sea, the sky and the land have infiltrated my work. My connection with the landscape is both visual and physical. My work looks back to pre-history and the archetypal vessels used for storing, holding and preserving. Essential pots that once served a practical purpose and held a ritualistic place in both the everyday and the journey into the next world. As containers of emotion and connectors with the spiritual, I want my vessels to inhabit our spaces in light and shadow with nuances of colour and surface texture that neither painting or sculpture can.