KATHERINE CUTHBERT

SOUTH AFRICAN BORN, LONDON-BASED PAINTER AND POTTER

WHEN I came to London in 1969, I wanted to do an art course, but felt the various colleges weren’t right for me and that I’d rather learn by experimenting. I started by making tapestry bags – I showed my first one to fashion editor Sheila Wetton at Vogue, who featured it in the magazine the next issue. I gradually started painting more, at first with acrylics, but it wasn’t very satisfactory. I’d always loved the colours of the 14th-century frescoes by Giotto, so I learnt how to do proper fresco painting with pigments I grind myself onto wet lime plaster, which becomes chemically bound so it looks like coloured stone. I had also always wanted to work with clay, so I joined an evening class. After seeing photographs of Lucy Rie’s pots, and being stunned by the strength, beauty, simplicity and timelessness of all her forms, I wrote to ask if I could visit her. Soon, I was going once a week, taking my pots to show her. I learnt a huge amount from her, about pots as well as life. I start with sketching and then I work only with the wheel – it’s a fantastic tool because my hands become part of the process of forming the pot. I work with very soft stoneware, sometimes adding in grog (ground bisque clay) for texture, or porcelain, which is beautiful to throw with, even if it needs a little more coaxing. I decorate with only black and white – painting directly onto leather-hard clay before firing then glazing, or with oxides onto a biscuit pot which runs more – because my pots are for flowers and I don’t want to detract from their vibrancy. When I work, I want to capture that same quiet moment of stillness I feel when I’m absorbed in making my pots – that same quiet, personal moment you might feel when looking at a flower or sitting in a garden near the sea.