Bio:
Jeanne Blissett Robertson graduated with a BA Hons in Sculpture & Environmental Art from Glasgow School of Art in 2015. Since then she has lived and worked internationally carrying out artist residencies in Abu Dhabi (Manarat Al Saadiyat), Mexico (Trapo Galeria), Edinburgh (Edinburgh Ceramics Workshop) and most recently Ullapool, Scotland (An Talla Solais). She recently received an Arts Council England grant, 'Developing Your Creative Practice', for a self-tailored ceramics training programme where she learnt from crafts people based in Scotland. Her activity included salt-glazing in Isle of Skye, making geological glazes with rocks from Assynt (world heritage site), foraging for clay and minerals, and multiple-part mould making for slip-casting. Recent exhibitions include 'To A Green Thought', DVAA, Philadelphia, 2022, 'Off-Kilter', Drill Hall, Edinburgh, 2021, and 'Running Parallel', Lewes Light Festival, 2020. Alongside her practice, Robertson delivers experimental art workshops for people of all ages and abilities.
Artist Statement:
I am a ceramic artist exploring the interaction and interconnectivity between nature, design, and human experience in the context of our current climate crisis. My project-based practice responds to different natural topics (usually site-specific to where I am working) such as coral in Abu Dhabi, Horse Mussel reefs, seasonal star constellations, and most recently metamorphic rocks. Works visualise incongruous relationships between organic forms and symbols/graphics that exemplify human design. Continuing this theme, I use a mixture of ceramic processes such as slip-casting, slab-building, hand-building, salt-glazing, and painting with matt underglazes, to juxtapose aesthetic styles. Present in my work is a fluidity between what’s man-made and what’s from natural origin, putting into question how something is formed and how different timescales connect and interact with each other.
