Colin Pearson
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Colin Pearson
Colin Pearson makes pots that evoke memories both tactile and visual of the great Chinese archaic bronzes of the Shang, of medieval hammer beam roofs, of the grand European porcelains of the eighteenth century.
One of the intriguing aspects of Colin Pearson’s pots are their rims and edges: sometimes wafer thin, brittle and apparantly torn, there is a sense of clay on the edge of fragility. This is particularly true of the porcelain, but also of the large and sometimes monumental stoneware pieces - that quality of robustness and stability offset by delicate serrated edges, and by the characteristic wings and attachments which help to balance the form.
These seem an effective foil to to his often free and strident throwing gestures, but they too help to animate the vessel, adding to that seemingly paradoxical state of motion and stillness that we see in the best pots around us.
The pots made by Colin Perason are full of gestural vigour, in their consummate throwing and turning of the clay and are capable of moments of both the contemplative and the theatrical. The glaze plays with qualities of metal and stone.