Sutton Taylor
The Light of Dawn, 2008,
51 x 33 cm,
Lustered ceramic
For information on Sutton Taylor touring exhibition click here.
With his longish, silvered hair and watchful, intelligent face,
ceramic artist, Sutton Taylor would be natural casting for a medieval
scholar or alchemist. Pottery has been a lifelong passion of his, a
career that chose him at an early age. Talking to him, it soon becomes
apparent that he has never been as focussed on the making of his name
of the building of a fortune as he has on the pursuit of an elusive,
often accidental perfection of form and colour. Not once in a conversation
lasting a whole morning does he mention mysticism, even to dismiss
it – unusual
in someone being needled for their life story – but there is a
hermit’s daunting single-mindedness in his dedication.
In lustreware, it seems, Sutton Taylor has found
the discipline that suits him, not simply because of the happy accidents
of colouration in the final firings but because of his quiet, Yorkshireman’s pride
in persevering where so many others have lost heart. His patience must
be saintly. “I’m not patient,” he insists. “But
I am tenacious. People do give up and I’ve come so near to giving
up sometimes. The final firing is just so finely tuned. Seconds matter.
If you go on for even five seconds too long you’ll lose one of
the metals. Either the gold or the silver will vapourise and go up the
chimney, return to the universe and you’re left with nothing. If
you lose a whole kiln full, you can lose six month’s work, which
is hard to weather and it takes a few days to decide you’re going
to go on. It’s so precarious.” But he’s smiling as
he says this.
Patrick Gale, ‘Sutton Taylor – Happy Accidents’,
2008
For Sutton Taylor the ceramic body is a surface
to work on, whether it be his handsome bowls or elegant long-necked
bottles. In recent years he has increasingly been producing sculptural
forms and he also enjoys making tile panels and has even made murals – but
that type of commission does not come along very often. “Lately I have been
really satisfied with how things are turning out…I have had to
work at this but I am really happy with it.”
Visitors to the exhibition will also be happy. The striking forms and
rich lustred surfaces transport the viewer into a magical world with
an ancient history.
Moira Vincentelli, ‘Lustre’, 2009
My work is concerned with the use of colour as a vehicle
of expression and a means of evoking emotional and spiritual responses,
as well as with the abstract depiction of situations observed in the
natural work which have caused delight. I am attracted to bright and
changing light conditions in expansive skies and moving water – to
light through foliage – to patterns and juxtapositions of colour
in the landscape – to
patterns of light and shade in rock faces or in individual pebbles. Any
one of a million remembered images may be the starting point for a pot,
but once begun, a valid piece will take on its own life and dictate what
it requires to become itself – and this is the enduring fascination.
Sutton
Taylor, Quote from The Ceramic Surface by Matthias Ostermann
The forthcoming exhibition at Hart Gallery London will be the first venue
of a major touring exhibition which will include Aberystwyth University,
Lotherton Hall (part of Leedss Museums), Huddersfield Art Gallery, and
Ruthin Craft Centre.
A full colour catalogue with an essay by Moira Vincentelli (Senior Lecturer
in Art History and Curator of the Cermic Collectioon and Archive at Aberystwyth
University) is available. Click here for
more information.