Elizabeth Vischer
I was born in 1971 in Newtonmore in the Central Highlands. The wild landscape of my childhood and the influence of two highly creative parents has fed in to my own practice and I have been drawing, painting and making in response to my surroundings for as long as I remember.
I initially trained and worked as a midwife but my increasing interest in creative art practice led me to complete the Foundation Course at Leith School of Art in 1997, a turning point for me.
After nursing, my work was heavily influenced by an interest in the human figure and I spent the years when my children were small concentrating on exploring this theme, attending a Figure Painting Masterclass at Hospitalfield House and a year long Figure Painting Course at Leith School of Art.
Alongside figurative studies I was also beginning to develop responses to my beloved wild landscapes - and went on to complete the year long Advanced Painting Course at Leith, investigating an increasing fascination with the abstracted and textural and looking for new means to express my obsession with surface. This obsession recently led me to clay and the endless possibilities it presented for further exploring surface design by taking that in to 3D form. Over the last few years I have attended multiple classes at the Edinburgh Ceramic Workshop and developed my learning with contemporary ceramicist, Tricia Thom.
I enjoy wheel thrown pots, embracing both the quiet discipline and the unexpected outcomes of this practice and love to emulate ideas of a landscape, or objects found within these landscapes, in to their forms and finishes.
This series of vessels, ‘Sea Jars’, is directly inspired by these found objects, their sea-worn surfaces and by wild ocean edges.
Made with grogged stoneware clay, they have been decorated with slip, oxides and copper rich glazes to emulate the effects of time, salt water, wind and waves on stone and metal, resulting in objects both visually rich and beautifully tactile.
I live in Haddington with my husband and four children and work from my own garden studio.
