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Green Pebble Magazine
Robin
Welch: Raw Power
Green Pebble Winter 2007 issue
The writer first came to know Robin Welch as an organic vegetable gardener, a man who loves to work with the earth; then as a walker, a man who walks out over the undulating Suffolk landscapes contemplating the moods of the approaching weather. Finally he came to know of him as a potter, a man who once upon a time had produced many utilitarian pieces for the home and table but who now sculpts and paints clay.
To
think of Robin as a ceramic artist is to miss the half of it. He studied as
a painter and a sculptor, whilst surreptitiously learning pottery. Then he
went to Australia and came in contact with the old earth and now he sculpts
clay to bear the colours of the world he loves; the Australian world of earth,
sky, horizon and weather.
Look down from an aeroplane and see the Australian outback - its ochres, umbers,
and burnished yellows; see the song lines of Aboriginal ‘walk about’
trails cutting to the horizon and then look to Robin’s slab form pots
and see the similarities. Look to the vivid stripes of white and blue vertically
cutting across smudges of reds and greys on his pots and then look to aboriginal
body decoration and know there is a relationship there.
Robin goes to a primordial place that very few artists are prepared to visit.
He does not seek to control that place, just to record its raw power and preserve
its texture, colour and shape.
In the 80s Robin demonstrated he could throw clay and turn pots with the best
of them as he was then producing a vast range of popular domestic ware. Now,
he has moved on to visceral forms of raw evolution - no more symmetry for
symmetry’s sake.
Robin uses primarily an oil-fired kiln which he is so familiar with ...
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