Malcolm Dobson

Malcolm Dobson creates sculptural and decorative ceramics inspired by a passion for architecture, buildings and townscapes. A fascination with industrial and commercial structures, especially where they have fallen into disuse and are abandoned or neglected, coupled with a deep-seated feeling for the Romantic appeal of ruins generates a desire to create pieces that portray mood, feeling and emotion - in the words of Graham Sutherland "I found that I could express what I felt only by paraphrasing what I saw. ... the mysteriously intangible must be made immediate and tangible, and vice versa."

Work is slab built, with the surfaces enriched with applied scraps of clay and impressions and marks made by tools and found objects. Multiple glazes and slips are used to create textures and layers of colour echoing patterns made by architectural elements, the colours and textures of crumbling stone, rusting metal, and peeling & cracked paint.

The work is fired to stoneware temperature (c. 1260 C) in electric and gas kilns - the latter used for reduction firings.