Painted Hills

[offcntr]

In the past, I've been a slow learner. I didn't get my driver's license 'til my senior year of high school (admittedly, test anxiety played a part there). It took me nearly two semesters of pottery in college before I mastered centering. And I tried for a long time--unsuccessfully--to paint on pots.

Mostly, it was what I was trying to paint, or rather, what style. Learning pottery in Wisconsin from Minnesota potters put me smack in the middle of the Leach/Hamada tradition. So of course I tried to paint Japanese pots. Without noticeable success.

They were stiff, labored, and I think I was painting them under a clear glaze, so blurry as well. Frequently, the oxide went on too thick and burned right through the glaze to a scaly black mess.

I finally got a handle on decorating at the Tuscarora Pottery School. I learned a lot in that two-week summer workshop: Raw glazing and single-firing. Trimming pots on a Giffin grip. Techniques for throwing plates and pulling handles that I still use today.

And quite by accident, how I ought to paint.

In addition to the usual mix of glazes--celadons, cobalts, temmoku and the modestly named Best Possible White--they had brushes and stains for decorating, including a lovely, silky iron overglaze taken from Michael Cardew's Pioneer Pottery book. It's 80% red iron oxide, 20% red clay, and it goes on something like tempera, and something like really good calligraphy ink, the kind you grind on a stone before you sit down the tea ceremony. How could I resist?


So I found myself with a bottle of stain, a bamboo brush and some freshly glazed dinner plates. Looking for inspiration, I sat on the front step of the studio, and just painted what I saw. Mountains, sagebrush scrub, an old dynamite shack from the defunct gold mine where they'd scrounged the hard brick for their kiln.

Painting what I saw was the first step. Painting what I knew was the second. Wildflowers, weeds, dandelions and thistle and California poppies. My wife's irises, years later, and then, in a class demo, I painted a rooster on a pot and was lost forever.

It turns out animals and birds are what I paint best. Chickens, pigs, cats, cows from my farming childhood. Songbirds out my window. Exotics from the pages of National Geographic and, later, teh internetz. Seventy-five patterns and counting.

And the funny thing? People keep telling my how Asian my paintings look.