Ode to Clay

N.Rosenkrantz Christiansen

The inspiration

With a painterly approach, several masters are at play…Landscapes in Vangogh, along body parts à la Bacon, with Dalinistic scapes and planes…Universes these painters could create, small spaces within space, worlds within this world, places you can be exiled to, hideouts amid daily life… Macabre or Sad or Surreal. Grotesque in disguise, grotesque in small doses. The mixture of colours, in the realm of oil painting, in the glaze can be mirrored, can be further interpreted and exploited. The colours and nuances create an atmosphere in interaction with the clay, create an atmosphere that is complete, of something unpleasant, of something beautiful, of something….

The colours flow in the slip, in the glaze. A symbiosis of clay, slip and glaze. A unison….

The Clay

Digging the fingers deep into the wet mass, tearing out the viscera, leaving tracks in the field. Nature in the aftermath. The landscapes form, in clay, through the hands, with the hands, the hands that fly with the heart as captain. You want to throw it down, hit it hard, use the shape created, and all over again. The shapes created blindly with your eye.

A playground, a moment lost in the clay, lost in the land of fantasy beyond space and time. In a flying race with the clay, in the clay, with the clay. To dress in clay, to use one’s whole body, not just one’s hands, to roll around covered in clay and mould and shape and mould, therewith within with.

See how the pieces tear apart, see what is left behind and leave it, untouched. Accept that this is the shape the clay has decided, but that it could not be done without the interference of the hands…

Nynne Rosenkrantz Christiansen
© Nynne Rosenkrantz Christiansen
N.Rosenkrantz Christiansen
© Nynne Rosenkrantz Christiansen

The Glaze

Is with you all the way. Like a hidden dance partner, it lies beneath and in part steers the joust. It must be able to flow in the cracks and valleys you create. It must crawl over summits and obstacles. It must run down the side without running too far, it must be controlled in its run, and obey the barriers that are set, that you have set, that the clay has set. The crystals must form and lie close to where you decide, but they can surprise, they must surprise, they must tease and play hide and seek and appear in undiscovered corners, in unforeseen places.

Nynne Rosenkrantz Christiansen
© Nynne Rosenkrantz Christiansen

The Work

Through works I want to travel and glide through life, relieve pain and dress wounds and enjoy the fleeting moment where nothing but the clay and I reign, where we decide, and all my knowledge and all my skills and all my value becomes something concrete in the completed work. A testament.

My life, in clay, in works…

Learn more:

Can you see the process, can you feel the process, can you feel what I feel in the moment of creation, can you feel the spontaneity, the desire for the clay, the desire for life?

I want to pass on that experience, freeze it in time, a snapshot, a sensation.

Power, desire, life-energy. Can you feel it, feel it, like I feel it? Can I seduce with the clay, with the glaze? Can I create a space within this space, in this world, in this life… A stopping point, a moment, a pocket in the present. In the present that is lived, with everyday hardships and normalities and boxes and timetables and work plans and chores and 

– The rhythm in the performance, in the dance that creates the work. The rhythm of my body is transferred to the clay, to the glaze. The rhythm of my body, the rhythm of my soul can be understood, can be read, can be realised, can be seen. Can be seen by you. –

By artist and HEPHAESTUS craft ambassador Nynne Rosenkrantz Christiansen