The Journal of Australian Ceramics

The Painterly Approach

The Painterly Approach

Kate Dorrough

Vol 62, No. 2, 2023. p 122-123

Coming to ceramics from a painting background, exhibiting my paintings since 1996 within a commercial gallery context, ceramics have offered a sought expansion, reinvigoration, and depth to my art practice. Allowing for further explorations of materiality with the direct physicality of clay, using one’s hands to create an object, combined with the plasticity of glaze application as with acrylic paint. Ceramics have led to a greater sensitivity of the textual surface. The additional alchemic quality of the kiln, the unexpected, patience and fortitude have all fed back into my painting process. Attracted to the potential to extend the painterly mark onto a three-dimensional form, I approach the ceramic vessel as a sculptural object, with its painterly surface in the round, exhibiting these in direct relationship to my large acrylic painting on linen.

This is not a new idea, being inspired and influenced by an array of examples of the painter as ceramicist, alongside a wealth of historical examples of the ceramists and the painterly mark, including an intentional reciprocity with the medium of painting, such as Betty Woodman and Peter Voulkos.

Initially I experimented and exhibited utilitarian earthenware ceramics painted with underglaze paints and lustres, expanding to slip cast bowls inverting their functionality with pierced holes and stitching, to satirical earthenware hand-built Staffordshire inspired figurines. Alongside this, studying with Barbara Campbell Allen. Her generous guidance set me on my own path, finally arriving at hand built coiled BRT stoneware vessels, consisting of numerous layers of glaze, slips and stains combined with numerous firings. Consciously and unconventionally approaching the ceramic surface as a painting. This approach has inadvertently become so hot right now! With current trends to liberate the ceramic object pushing it beyond technical limitations, expectations, and contexts. The painterly approach is an extension of ceramic as experiential, as sculpture or installation, challenging traditional hierarchical values and the once pre-existing prominence of painting.

For me, it was important I made my own hand built ceramic forms embedded with the tactility of the hands mark echoing a relationship to the painted surface. Consciously invoking the historical calligraphic mark alongside an intuitive, abstract, and contemporary painterly application. Unrestricted by conventions and in homage to them, I enjoy the experimental with its ever-expanding visual dialogue. Lately extending this conversation of paint and clay to include projected videos, further expanding the potential of ceramics within an installation context, igniting the gallery space.

 Upcoming exhibitions

‘The Vessel and the River’, ArtHouse Gallery, 27th July - 12th August 2023

‘Heather + Kate Dorrough : Lineage’, Manly Art Gallery & Museum, 1st Sept - 8th October 2023, touring to Manning Regional Gallery 1st Feb - 17th March, Tamworth Regional Gallery, 13th April - 16th of June, Ararat Gallery TAMA, 29th June  - 13th of October 2024

Cementa Festival, 19th - 22nd September 2024