Gráinne Watts

Gráinne Watts grew up in a creative household where making was part of life. Introduced to clay at the age of ten by her mother, Gráinne went on to study ceramics in Dublin before becoming an apprentice to Irish potter Geoffrey Healy in Bray, an experience that gave her a love for the potter’s wheel and an appreciation of the “painstaking discipline of repetition throwing”. Gráinne has recently moved to a new home and large studio space, in the creatively renowned area of Kilkenny, where she creates thrown and handbuilt vessels and sculptural forms, inspired by her interest in organic geometry, colour and pattern. Having lived by the Irish coastline all her life, she looks forward to exploring this new environment, in a part of Ireland that both is beautiful geographically and is home to many outstanding Makers.

Gráinne Watts uses a combination of hand-building and throwing techniques when creating her ceramic pieces. The large Bindu forms are hand-built using flattened coils of stoneware clay; these are pinched, paddled and scraped into shape while resting in a concave mould. The inner cavity is thrown and incorporated into the form using a semi-inflated water balloon as a support inside the piece. Gráinne finds it much easier to build these forms by hand and enjoys the rhythmic quality of the coiling process. She uses a smooth stoneware clay for the larger bellied forms and porcelain clay for the smaller vessel forms that are thrown in two parts, joined, dried slowly and then turned on the wheel. She spends many hours refining the surfaces of the forms, through scraping and smoothing before the initial firing, and then wet and dry sanding before the decorative process begins.

Next of Europe Exhibition