KATHERINE GLENDAY

Les Ateliers Courbet is pleased to have once again worked with South African ceramicist, Katherine Glenday, to bring a fresh ensemble of porcelain vessels to the New York gallery. While Glenday is known for her exploration of white, soft bisque porcelain's translucence, she has always engaged with color and the use of subtle pigment in her work with clay bodies. This exhibition highlights Glenday's continued exploration of color and pigmentation, and her introduction of darker porcelain to her ceramic repertoire.

After forty years of working with porcelain Katherine Glenday explains that the material has accompanied her along her artistic journey, as well as her personal experiences. Each vessel reflects a unique set of circumstances, elevated by masterful and nuanced technique. She states that "grief" was what inspired her to work with darker clays beginning in 2020. Glenday found the black clay vessels to be meditative, grounding, and comforting. Absorbing and reflecting light much differently than white porcelain might, the darker vessels highlight the intensity of color and the pigments employed.

Considering her vessels to be "canvases in movement," Katherine Glenday balances the approach of both a painter and ceramicist as she explores the materiality and matter through an "alchemical creative process." For her new work with darker clay bodies and explorative firing temperatures, she made the decision to keep the form of the vessel relatively homogenous, lending more emphasis to the surfaces and pigments.

Katherine Glenday has found freedom in softer surfaces and lower firing temperatures. This exploration has captured a "chalky, nuanced light that seems to wrap softly around the vessels. They invoke feelings of landscapes and distant horizon-lines and contribute to a broader conversation in the history of art. They resonate with explorations of color by other masters, "from European old masters to Rothko's abstract investigation of soft dusty colors."