Eric Metcalfe tells me that he’s really missing the camaraderie of our Raids and the opportunity to paint a plate or two. Our last creative get-together in my studio was last February. I also miss having the artists here for the day, their conversation and the lovely potluck lunch that they always bring. But recently, thanks to the kind delivery to and from Western Front by my neighbour David, Eric painted two of my bisque-fired slab oval plates. I’d sent along some little jars of his selected red, black,  turquoise and yellow underglazes. His two plates helped to fill my kiln for a recent glaze firing.

Here are his two vibrant graphic plates. I love how the designs sometimes use the plate’s shape and sometimes disrupt it. There are little surprises in the line directions and colour placement. Two more blanks are ready for his next plate-painting session but for now, he’ll be working alone.

I made some slab plates for myself, using my red earthenware instead of the Georgie’s Wonder White earthenware that I use for the Raiders’ plates and platters. Once again, I experimented with the paper resist idea to create patterns over possibly tree shapes. On a plate without a rim that can work well.

When I want to use the same ideas and colours on a wheel-thrown plate I find that it’s just as easy to draw the zig-zags freehand. I had been happily making another batch of the teeny snack plates and made a couple of larger lunch-size plates .. just because. Take a look at my abstract forest paintings on plates. Shall I do more? I certainly enjoy the quality of my coloured slips as a painting medium, on leather-hard plates. My visitors paint with underglazes on bisque ware.. a totally different experience. I am pleased to have found an excellent clear glaze that fits both clays and behaves well.

If you’d like to give a home to one of these plates or others in my studio contact me for a careful, masked studio visit.

There were four jugbirds in this firing too. I believe the Red Cardinal will make his home in Port Moody and the Northern Flicker is destined to fly to Montreal.

Now that the bears should be hibernating I’ve put a suet feeder up again and today, yay! a Pilly found it again. The Flickers are here all the time.. particularly enjoying the dastardly Chafer Beetle larvae in our lawn.

WordPress doesn’t like it when I try to add too many photos to a blog so I’ll just post another one for images of all those teeny wheel thrown snack plates.. maybe tomorrow.