February is often the least favourite month of the year – wet, cold and gloomy – but not at Bevere! We are starting our 2023 featured maker programme with two popular and well-established makers of considerable skill and creativity. We know that visitors will enjoy spending time with their work as well as the wide range of other ceramics and original prints in the gallery.

Christy Keeney is a long-established sculptural ceramicist from Ireland who has been exhibiting at Bevere over many years.  All his work – ranging from his ‘face’ brooches through to his large standing figures – display his distinctive and original voice. His work will always be recognised whatever the context. He is an artist whose work communicates art in clay with a unique abstraction. Notwithstanding the years that he has been showing at Bevere he still brings fresh thinking and creative energy to his work.

Clare Conrad produces fine stoneware that captures the poignant beauty and drama of weathering and corrosion – the point of balance between existence and decay. She finds the vessel form the most satisfying to use and enjoys the traditional method of wheel-throwing adding to the sense of time captured. Her pots are elegantly shaped – throwing at its best – and her decoration is exceptional. The layering of her colour and the abstraction took her a long time to develop but the outcome is entirely original.

We are also pleased to have two new exhibitors making this another diverse and interesting month – certainly worth a visit!

Jane Cairns is a ceramicist; she tells us that she finds beauty in the ordinary. This is manifest in her modernist approach to making pieces that are based on found objects. What emerges are pieces which are sculptural and make excellent works of art for the wall. She takes an experimental approach to ceramic processes to reflect form colour and texture of those objects she finds. She works at Thameside Studios by the River Thames.

Ian Cox is an artist/printmaker based in Torquay. His predominant technique has been lino printing however he intends to take up mezzotint during 2023, he also creates intensely detailed drawings in pencil and charcoal. He produces work which is inspired by his local coastline and Dartmoor and enjoys the inspiration of local folk tales and mythology. His impressive work demonstrates that printmaking is extraordinarily skilled as well as artistically creative.

So there we are – starting the new year with artists who will evoke much interest we are sure. Incidentally, we will also know by the opening of this feature who was the winner of our Annual Graduate Show selected by the votes of our visitors – watch this space.