Renée tells me that she took a pottery class many years ago. Certainly she is comfortable working on a curved surface and right away understood how to achieve opaque consistent surfaces. She comes to work for the day prepared with paper collages, carefully cuts out a paper template outlining the plate's shape and places it over her collage. She then draws the composition onto the…

  For Rebecca and Elizabeth underglazes are a whole new medium, and the idea of not knowing the final colour or surface texture until after two firings is a challenge. I can provide glazed sample 'cookies' and discuss thickness and layering but it sometimes needs a couple of painting sessions for an artist to achieve the result in her mind. Rebecca painted three plates this…

Elizabeth will be donating one of her four painted plates to the Western Front fundraiser.

We postponed the second painting day here for a week because it was so cold! When the temperature drops below zero outside, the furnace just can't keep the basement studio warm enough to work comfortably. So the next three painters came here on December 5th instead and with a little ceramic heater we were fine. Renee van Halm brought two newcomers to my studio for…

This was Greg's first trip out to Port Moody to paint a plate or two so he is not donating one yet. The other three plates were painted by Renee van Halm, Elizabeth McIntosh and Rebecca Brewer. I'll post pics of all of their plates next.