In painting these beautiful objects, some of them thousands of years old, I am re-tracing the gestures of artists long gone, and honouring our shared creativity.
Depuis belle lurette, on façonne l’argile pour en faire des bols, on les embellit avec soin, avec art, avec des marques de notre culture, et on les utilise pour partager cet élément vital qu’est la nourriture. Pour moi, le bol est le symbole parfait, commun à toute l’humanité.
En reproduisant ces magnifiques objets, dont plusieurs datent de milliers d’années, je retrace le gestuel des artistes disparus, en honorant et en partageant notre créativité.
“Early humans shaped and scraped clay to make vessels, cooked in them and realized they hardened, learned to make them impervious to water, and also to decorate them, with incisions and with glazes made from salts and metals. All pots are different, and all resemble each other (except for some defiant modern monsters). They are made elementally, using earth, air, fire and water. They represent the arts of peace, domestication, and elegance, whether of pure simplicity of form or of bravura demonstration of difficult mastery of techniques and images. They are where art meets craft, the useful meets the beautiful.”
-A.S. Byatt on the newly restored ceramics galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum
Mona Turner Artist 