Everything begins somewhere. A view from a window, a walk through a garden, the heady smell of a flower in bloom; the things we return to form the experiences we live, creating the foundation from which we build everything from. For artists this becomes the things they make.
Shirley Vauvelle is an established mixed-media artist and a selected member of the Craft Potters Association. Her exhibition, Source Material, brings together ceramics and paintings that share a language of process and place, a deep connection to nature and an appreciation for surface design. Incorporating botanical elements into her work Shirley uses materials found, grown and collected from her garden, creating layered, textured semi-abstract paintings and hand-built stoneware sculptural forms.
Source material is not only the earth beneath our feet – the flora and fauna that inspire; it is also memory, observation and experience. It is the landscape that shapes a palette, the objects gathered over time, the rhythms of daily practice and the quiet accumulation of moments that find their way into the work. Rather than imposing an idea onto a material, these works reveal what can happen when an artist works with its inherent qualities – allowing chance, intuition and process to become part of the final piece. These are quiet records reminding us that every work carries with it the story of its own becoming.