Jane Abbott
Jane Abbott trained at Brighton Art School, Gipsy Hill college London and at the university of London, Goldsmiths college in the 1970s. She lives and works in Shoreham -by- Sea, West Sussex.
Her ceramic work is mostly centred round the vessel form, although she also enjoys making flat wall pieces and jewellery. As an art teacher for many years, specialising in ceramics, she finds much of her inspiration comes from the research that is necessary when delivering the Art GCSE syllabus. Her early pots were influenced by Alison Britton and Elizabeth Fritch, potters working in the 1970’s. They gave her the confidence to break away from the Bernard Leach tradition. The textures and compositions of Ben Nicholson, other artists and at present the shapes from the 1950’s, also help to inform her work.
The immediacy of slab building along with hand modelling has been Jane’s chosen method, Using oxides and stains, she hand mixes her own coloured clays, which she then inlays into rolled slabs of stoneware clay. These flat sheets are formed into shapes. After a bisque firing, the pieces are sometimes worked into with oxide pencils and glazes, before being fired to stoneware temperatures.
Professor Simon Olding has said that Jane does not rest on the laurels of past success; she uses her teaching to lead her to deliver new ideas, and finds in this work the proper balance of creativity. Teaching is a creative process for her, not a necessary chore.
