Patricia Shone

Ceramics

14 Jul

Patricia Shone studied at Central School of Art in the 1980’s and has been working full time in ceramics for the last 20 years, living and working on the Isle of Skye.

The powerful landscape around the Isle of Skye has informed her ceramics. The surfaces of the land eroded by forces of climate and human intervention are the inspiration for the textures on her forms.

The natural textures of clay are similar to the patterns of erosion and decay in the geology of the land. Patricia aims to achieve a tension between the spontaneous patterns of texture and the formality of a vessel form. She creates vessels, boxes, bowls and jars because they represent innately human vessels of containment. There is another tension there too, between the natural and the human.

Patricia Shone’s pieces are made by hand; building and throwing, texturing, stretching and carving. Colours are achieved using slips, oxides and glazes but most of all by the firing processes. She uses raku firings for soft earthenware blacks and greys; wood firing for warm earth tones and glazed stoneware; saggar firing within the wood kiln for dark greys and glazed stoneware. This gives her a wide range of textures and densities of ceramic surface and body.
Patricia Shone has won numerous awards for her ceramic work. Most recently, she was announced the winner of the Emmanuel Cooper Prize at Ceramic Art London 2019, with works selected for the permanent collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum.