Vessel

Vessel-Landscape Process

a personal insight into the work of David Roberts

1.The Vessel

My ceramics are concerned with making the hollow vessel form which acts as a vehicle to bring to expression my ideas and feelings as an artist and human being.

Although I enjoy and admire the work of many potters making functional wares, I am not concerned, in my own work, with usefulness. I am, however, very committed to making vessels as they give focus, direction and context to my ceramics.

There is also a fascination with the potential for a simple pot form to hold, carry and imply layers of meanings and references. The formal language of my work reflects the influence of hand built ceramics from different periods and cultures, for example storage jars of West Africa or ritual vessels from Pre-Columbian America

As with these ceramics, in my own work I try and emphasise the formal signature of a hand built vessel - round, volumetric shapes rising from narrow, often rounded bases. I spend a lot of time in the consideration and treatment of the interior space of my pieces.

Over the years my ceramics have evolved from two elemental forms - a closed containing shape derived from vessels for storage and an open bowl shape derived from vessels for presentation. Although influenced by the processes and forms of earlier ceramics my work is intended to be essentially contemporary in nature.

For me the vessel represents a touchstone, a constant, a point of reference and an expression of timelessness in a world of flux and accelerating change.