Four ‘Raiders’ came out to Port Moody to spend the day painting plates last Friday. Eric chose not to come this time, but sent a platter that he’d painted at home to be included in my next firing. It’ll be a presentation piece.

The artists who’ve volunteered to provide a plate to form a set of six for this year’s February Western Front Gala fundraiser are Eric Metcalfe, Renée Van Halm, Elizabeth McIntosh, Paul Mathieu, Mina Totino and Jacqueline Ross.

It was a bright somewhat sunny day so the studio was light, and not too chilly and we quickly settled in to the usual companionable, quiet concentration of painting. We explained to first-time visitor Mina some of the tricks of painting on a bone-dry clay surface. With the usual potluck lunch and several cups of tea with Renée’s banana bread the time passed quickly. Each artist painted not only their contribution plate on the new asymmetrical four-sided form but several others too for fun.

While they painted plates with underglazes I was working on painting my long-stored-in-plastic jugbirds with slips.

Paul applied underglazes to a huge bisqued platter he’d spent the last visit carving so I’ll bisque it again now and then dip it in clear glaze.

At the end of the afternoon I packed up two plates each and some jars of underglaze for Eric and Jacquie, who was working at the Western Front that day, to paint at home. Al or I will pick them up on our next trip in to Vancouver and I must get them all fired, glazed and re-fired in the next couple of weeks.

As soon as all the plates are fired I’ll post photos of them. I think that the auction set will be quite striking and I’m looking forward to seeing the results of all the other underglaze painting experiments.