School of Art

Contact Details

School of Art
Aberystwyth University
Buarth Mawr
Aberystwyth
Ceredigion
SY23 1NG

Tel: +44 (0)1970 622460

Fax: +44 (0)1970 622461

Email: artschool@aber.ac.uk

Display artist/maker:

Madoline Keeler

Born: 1942, UK

Ceramicist. Born into a family with a history of pottery making, she attended Harrow School of Art where she trained for her NDD in pottery and took etching as an additional subject (1955-1962). Her tutors, including Victor Margrie and Michael Casson taught her throwing, mainly for the production of domestic ware. She admired early industrial pottery and undertook a post-graduate course in ceramics at the Royal College of Art where Lord Queensbury was the Head of Ceramics and also her tutor (1962-1965). The course focused on industrial ceramics but she became interested in colour and decoration, and the way it could profoundly affect form and change the mood of a pot.Married to fellow potter Walter Keeler, she devoted her time to bringing up a family during the 1970s. Experimentation with powdered underglaze colour led to a Research Fellowship (1984) at South Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education where she became interested in the combination of colour, line and texture in abstract patterns. She developed a body of work that combined the contrasting skills of both areas of her initial training: studio and industrial. These functional wheel-thrown forms have references to historical industrial ceramics with press moulded spouts and extruded handles. Laying out the design with masking tape to define the areas to be painted creates bold geometric patterns. Black provides emphasis for the most important elements of a pattern and this contrasts with sharp lemons and lilacs. Sponge is used to apply dots and other shapes in underglaze colours. There are three firings, a biscuit firing, an underglaze firing at 750C and a glaze firing at 1040C. Sources of inspiration include historical ceramics, literature and the circus. Since the 1980s, she has shown her work in many group exhibitions in Europe and the US

Objects in the collections associated with this artist/maker

[Jug] C1225 Ceramics

[Tea Pot] C1224 Ceramics



 
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