Anthony O Brien
I grew up in a household of painters and paintings, five generations of them. So paint, clay and plasticine dominated my childhood. After graduating in languages from T.C.D., I trained as a modernist potter and the Bauhaus aesthetic in Denmark and the USA. But then I was introduced to "Pioneer Potter" Michael Cardew, and his son Seth, then a painter in 1973, and all my ideas about pottery changed.
Since then, maiolica, decorated tin-glazed earthenware has occupied me for most of my life. But a CC of I study grant in 2000 (New Irish Ceramics) allowed me to develop wood-ash-glazed high-temperature stoneware. Jun, tenmoku and oil-spot glazes are still favourites, constantly developing and changing.
So my "painting" emerges more as drawing with a brush on maiolica, more painterly in stoneware pictures, and more graphic with sgraffitto through slip on stoneware dishes. But wood-ash glazes give a depth of colour and luminosity that is hard to equal with traditional oil paint. Pure alchemy
.
http://www.anthonyobrienart.com/
Since then, maiolica, decorated tin-glazed earthenware has occupied me for most of my life. But a CC of I study grant in 2000 (New Irish Ceramics) allowed me to develop wood-ash-glazed high-temperature stoneware. Jun, tenmoku and oil-spot glazes are still favourites, constantly developing and changing.
So my "painting" emerges more as drawing with a brush on maiolica, more painterly in stoneware pictures, and more graphic with sgraffitto through slip on stoneware dishes. But wood-ash glazes give a depth of colour and luminosity that is hard to equal with traditional oil paint. Pure alchemy
.
http://www.anthonyobrienart.com/
