Living Treasures: Masters of Australian craft
Pippin Drysdale - Master of Australian Craft 2008-2010
Pippin Drysdale was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1943 and is internationally acclaimed as one of Australia's most outstanding ceramists. Her work is represented in many private and public collections throughout Australia and the world and she has had a great number of solo and group exhibitions. Pippin Drysdale works in series, but each porcelain work is a one-off.
Drysdale's love of the Australian bush was born during her childhood, which was in part spent on family properties in the north and south of Western Australia. In her work she creates for the viewer a dialogue, a point of engagement with the Australian landscape. It is a motif that has so often captured the popular and artistic imagination of this country and one that holds such evocative, emotional and spiritual links for many Australians, and particularly Indigenous Australians.
Drysdale predominately works in the form of the vessel and displays in her work a personal and profound relationship with the Australian landscape. Her vividly coloured, glazed and incised ceramic forms have subtly evolved and transformed, just like the land that inspired them.
The vessels in the Tanami Traces Series are a response to an excursion I took over the Tanami desert in a light aircraft. The vessels radiate quiet nobility, yet conceal surprises, as their surfaces change with the perspective from which they are viewed. What from a distance often appears to be monochromatic, reveals fine nuances on closer viewing, a play of subtle light and colour effects, attributes with which could also describe a desert. The fine lines winding around the forms are sometimes even, sometimes broken, and in some places coarse, evoking traces in the sand. These works are the essence of emotional experience and aesthetic reflection and are an elaborate technique to express my mental images. The procedure is far from reliable; some 40% of the output is lost during the firing. However when everything goes well, form and decoration merge into a unity of great harmony.
Pippin Drysdale
Tanami Traces Series IV, 2005-2006
Installation: John Curtin Gallery, December 2006
Dimensions: Variable - H:27 to 42cm
Photographer: Adrien Lambert
Pippin Drysdale
Tanami Traces Series V, 2006
Sap Green Assemblage II
Dimensions: Variable - H:5 to 37cm
Photographer: Adrien Lambert
Pippin Drysdale
Tanami Traces Series V, 2006
Rock Fire - Simpson's Gap
Dimensions: H:42.5 x 19cm (diam)
Photographer: Adrien Lambert
Pippin Drysdale
Tanami Traces Series IV, 2005
Water Mark I
Dimensions: H:39.5 x 20cm (diam)
Photographer: Adrien Lambert
