Kitty Shepherd | Needing a bit of chaos...
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| Kitty Shepherd |
In her own words
"I feel I need to catalogue and impose order on all the things that affect me.
All my pots are intensely specific. After years as a production thrower I now hand build all the pieces that I produce, throwing only the lids. It is a less rushed process and allows me to contemplate the starting point better. My main studio location is in Granada Spain, but my clay is still from Staffordshire because I love it.
When it comes to the painted surface I have a particular system. I feel I need to catalogue and impose order on all the things that affect me. This is why I choose the subjects I do for the pots I make. It is all intentional; there is nothing random in the selection of my source material - everything is obsessively thought out.
The images and scraps that I have gathered together are like the ingredients for a recipe that needs to mix and start talking to each other.
People who have visited me in my studio are probably surprised to see that as part of my creative process I start with what can only be described as piles of scraps of paper, advertisements and catalogues. Deep down I am a collector and for decades, I have been filling books, boxes and folders with saved scraps of paper that interest me. It is these things that eventually end up as the starting point for a new pot or collection of pots.
Normally, in my ordered folders things stay among their own kind. Bicycles are with road markings and toy guns are, at a push, with water pistols and ray guns, but separated. The lipstick folder is huge and splits by era and make. Storing pictures and information for my artwork is very important and this super organised system works, but only as a depository. When I actually need to do something with them, I need a bit of chaos. The images and scraps that I have gathered together are like the ingredients for a recipe that needs to mix and start talking to each other. A mixed box can remain ‘live’ or active on my workbench for several months and even when it is exhausted the box is preserved for another time.
Many of the objects I am attracted to have been with me all my life as memory and nostalgia, by collecting them I am sorting them out. The pieces of paper remain, but they become so disorganised once worked with it can take years for the process to throw them up again.
Kitty Shepherd (BORN 1960) is a studio potter and ceramic artist with a career as a slipware potter spanning 35 years. Her training has been an unorthodox path through further education which began in the arts, but not in ceramics. Her early passions were for the stage studying primarily voice and drama. It was during this two-year course that she first met clay as a minor subject. Four productive years of singing; acting and ceramics were the foundations of her artistic life filled with many significant turning points. However, ceramics won out. From the first beginnings of a ceramics A Level she went on to study Product and Three-Dimensional Design and this set her up to make pots for the rest of her life where she continues her passion for slipware and developing her own unique style.
People who have visited me in my studio are probably surprised to see that as part of my creative process I start with what can only be described as piles of scraps of paper, advertisements and catalogues. Deep down I am a collector and for decades, I have been filling books, boxes and folders with saved scraps of paper that interest me. It is these things that eventually end up as the starting point for a new pot or collection of pots.
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| Kitty Shepherd | Painting By Numbers |
Normally, in my ordered folders things stay among their own kind. Bicycles are with road markings and toy guns are, at a push, with water pistols and ray guns, but separated. The lipstick folder is huge and splits by era and make. Storing pictures and information for my artwork is very important and this super organised system works, but only as a depository. When I actually need to do something with them, I need a bit of chaos. The images and scraps that I have gathered together are like the ingredients for a recipe that needs to mix and start talking to each other. A mixed box can remain ‘live’ or active on my workbench for several months and even when it is exhausted the box is preserved for another time.
Many of the objects I am attracted to have been with me all my life as memory and nostalgia, by collecting them I am sorting them out. The pieces of paper remain, but they become so disorganised once worked with it can take years for the process to throw them up again.
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| Kitty Shepherd | Orange Mivvi |
Moving my studio 11 years ago to Spain triggered me to treat these images as treasure, they became visual moments in very sharp focus, it was a way of coping with the loss of the familiar." Kitty Shepherd 2019
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| Kitty Shepherd | Test Card |
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