Patricia has been living and working on the Isle of Skye for the past 25 years. Her work is informed and inspired by the powerful landscape of the island. Beneath the thin eroding soils of the Highlands, lies the constant and immutable presence of rock, the form beneath the surface. Bringing these two elements of texture and form together in a way that satisfies her has taken a long time. She sees her work as an expression of the journey towards understanding her place in life. Patricia cannot separate it from her experience of living in this landscape or from the path that took her there.
The pieces are made by hand building, texturing, stretching and carving. Colours are achieved most of all by the firing processes. The soft earthenware blacks and greys of raku firing; wood firing for warm earth tones and glazed stoneware; charcoal saggar firing within the wood kiln for dark greys and matt glazes. This gives Patricia’s work a wide range of textures and densities of surface and body, reflecting the varied geology of the land.
“It seems that there is an inherent inspiration in a person’s fundamental being and an artist’s work can be the search to find expression for this, consciously or unconsciously. This is the deep essence in a piece which can connect one human being to another. The form beneath the surface.” Patricia Shone
