Barry Stedman mainly works with red earthenware clay. They are usually wheel thrown and altered/ constructed from soft slabs and then painted with coloured slips, stains and oxides.
He enjoys working with simple vessel forms, exploring and developing exciting relationships between colour, texture and form. He tries to spend time drawing and painting outside, which helps to inform his ideas. He’s often influenced by the shapes, colours, light and atmosphere in the places that surround him at the time.
His intention is to use the vessel forms that he makes, loosely thrown and altered on the wheel or constructed from slabs, as vehicles to explore contrasts of light and shade, hard and soft, warm and cool, rough and smooth. He is interested in the way edges meet and overlap. Along with the rhythms, tensions and harmonies created between colours, spaces, lines and textures in form and surface.
Barry Stedman came to ceramics later in life after a career in retail. He had always been interested in drawing and mark making so when he discovered ceramics at evening class he was seduced by the possibilities of clay as a way of expressing abstract ideas of colour and form. In 2009, Barry gained a BA, (Hons) Ceramics from the University of Westminster, Harrow Campus with First Class Honours. Since then, he has been part-time studio assistant at Edmund De Waal’s studio in London.
