Jane Seymour | Always encouraged to be creative...

Jane Seymour | Working in her studio

'...myself and my siblings were all encouraged to ‘make things’ with our hands.'

"I came to ceramics relatively late in life. Born in 1954, I grew up in an unconventional family life on a smallholding in Suffolk, before we moved to a larger farm in Wales in 1964. My father was an author and broadcaster, and my mother an artist and potter, and I was always encouraged to be creative. As a child I found out early on that I could sometimes get out of doing a hated chore if I said that I was busy drawing. Often when my father travelled to research a book the whole family went with him, sometimes for weeks at a time, which was great fun, but it also meant that schoolwork became rather neglected. An academic and formal education was never taken very seriously, but myself and my siblings were all encouraged to ‘make things’ with our hands. One of my birthday presents was a small handloom.

Jane Seymour | Rocking Vessel with Sleeping Woman

...I began to experiment in hand-building, learning through trial and error. 

Loathing school, I dropped out at sixteen with very few qualifications apart from Art and English, which were the only two subjects I was remotely interested in. I had absolutely no idea of what to do next, my father's useful advice to me being: “I wouldn’t worry about it too much, just make life up as you go along”. Great, thanks dad! And so I waitressed, and au pair'd, and life modeled for a few years. Then as a young mother in my early twenties, I ran a small craft shop with my partner who was a wood turner, where I painted on wooden boxes and silk scarves, designed and made clothes, and made a few bits of pottery to fire in my mother's kiln. Up until that point I had no particular desire to work in clay, and I certainly didn’t want to follow in the footsteps of my mother, who made finely thrown and highly decorated domestic pottery. However, I did find out that I enjoyed the feel of the material, and so I began to experiment in hand-building, learning through trial and error. My father once said to me “why can't you be a proper potter like your mother” which infuriated me. “I don’t want to be like my mother” I yelled, “I want to be like me!”

Jane Seymour | After Gauguin

 I am completely self-taught, but I have been strongly influenced by the work of other ceramists and artists

Moving to Ireland in 1994, I bought a couple of acres of land to build myself a house and studio in the rural wilds of County Clare, and it was then that I began to take ceramics seriously. I am completely self-taught, but I have been strongly influenced by the work of other ceramists and artists, such as Hans Coper, Brancusi, Jane Perryman, James Tower, and Gabriel Koch. I avidly read books on different pottery techniques and made a point of visiting museums and exhibitions. I was initially attracted to the challenge of smoke-firing my work, which I found to be a more organic approach to surface decoration than the use of glazes, the technical aspect which has never interested me. I also began teaching within the community and in local schools which I found to be mutually beneficial. For a number of years, I became a core organizer of the arts programme in the local arts festival, leaving after nine years to have more time to focus more on my own work. 

Jane Seymour

At the time I had been studying a particular community of crows at the coast who I came to know and recognize.

A few years ago I began to take my work in another direction, by etching drawings and textures into the unfired clay, using studies from my sketchbooks. At the time I had been studying a particular community of crows at the coast who I came to know and recognize. I was fascinated by their individual characters, and their behavior within the group, and I was attracted by their graphic shapes stark black against the sky and sea. These sketches I used in my designs onto large shallow slab bowls, enhanced by rubbing in and applying oxides and coloured slips. Following on from there I began to use my life drawing studies, another passion of mine and challenging myself to build larger more sculptural ceramic shapes. My nudes are often inspired by artists whom I admire, such as Gauguin, Modigliani, Picasso, Matisse, as well as my maternal grandfather who I never knew, but who was head of the art department in Sydney art school in the forties, and who illustrated technical books on figure drawing. And I still feel that I am constantly making life up as I go along.

Jane Seymour | Crow Sung