An acclaimed international artist, Western Australian Living Treasure and Master of Australian Craft, Pippin Drysdale’s career as a ceramic artist spans over 40 years. Her passion for her arts practice merges with the love of the landscape, which has extended across continents and in most recent years has focused on the vivid desert landscapes throughout Australia. Her works evoke a timeless and breathtaking sense of space within finely crafted porcelain vessels, narrating the vastness of colour experienced in the Australian landscape.
Pippin Drysdale is one of Australia’s most accomplished contemporary ceramic artists and one of our finest exports. Her works continue to be in demand by galleries, museums, curators and collectors all around the world.
Deserts are commonly considered to be empty and barren wastelands, devoid of life, cultural significance and aesthetic value. This brief extract by the English poet and writer, John Milton, hints at the evocative sounds, lights and shadows, exotic forms and topographies of the desert. Australia’s vast semi-arid spaces (including ten deserts) that compose 70% of the Australian mainland, are characterised by poor soil, droughts and infrequent flooding rains. Yet they boast an impressive biodiversity and many spectacular ancient geological formations that are an ongoing source of inspiration for Pippin Drysdale. The artist explains that landscape ‘is all about colour, whether subtle and soft or vibrant with contrast’. Drysdale never aims to accurately reproduce a scene, but rather captures fleeting moments in an intuitive manner, and celebrates her passion for the structures, colours and memories of the Australian ‘outback’ that is her birth place and home.
Statement from Pippin Drysdale referencing the Australian desert written by Maggie Baxter, textile artist and writer, 2016.
The ten deserts include the Great Victoria Desert, Great Sandy Desert, Tanami Desert, Simpson Desert, Gibson Desert, Little Sandy Desert, Strzelecki Desert, Sturt Stony Desert, Tirari Desert, and Pedirka Desert.
