John Newdigate

John Newdigate is one of South Africa’s most celebrated ceramicists and artists. Living in the mountainous Overberg region of the Western Cape, he is inspired by terrestrial themes and abstracted forms, and colours drawn from the natural environment around him.  He is an exuberant colourist and specializes in painting hand-built, porcelain vessels with underglaze pigments. Newdigate exploits colour to its full advantage, using multiple washes to build up subtle rich layering. Complex, transluscent and radiant imagery emerges from a mix of sharp and blurred lines which give depth and perspective. A variety of themes recur in his work, most notably plants and animals that are used to make wry commentary on human emotions and interactions.                      “I am an artist who chooses to paint on ceramics. My large painted porcelain vessels embrace a love of colour and depict my immediate surroundings. Recent works are a collaboration with master hand builder Ian Garrett, who creates forms with subtle and taut curves that are an ideal surface on which to express my ideas. Working on a three dimensional surface, of which half is obscured at any one time, allows for the narrative to be revealed as the viewer circles the work. This introduces time as a fourth dimension, in which imagery unfolds as static animation”. – John Newdigate, 2019