Karen Howarth lives in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, where she works full-time from her purpose built garden studio. Karen says “There is something very special about walking down to my garden studio, cup of tea in hand, early in the morning. Ceramics studios have a familiar smell to them: earthy, dusty … I’m not sure what it is but it tells me I’m in the right place.”

Since completing her MA at the Royal College of Art she has divided her time between teaching, raising a family and continuing to make. Her work is inspired by her love of nature and the outdoors; the lines and patterns within the landscape, the texture of grasses against a stormy grey sky, the variation in colour of a vast, open seascape. Photography allows Karen to bring her inspiration back into the studio so that she can can 'paint' onto the clay. Sketchbook work enables Karen to plan, however the intuitive decision making only happens when she starts working with the clay itself. Wall pieces and tiles have been the vehicle for her exploration of colour and texture for some time now. Recent additions to this are bowls and shallow dish forms which compliment and broaden the range of work that she has to offer.

Karen learnt how to throw on the potter’s wheel many years ago during her A Level Art classes. It is a process which requires a balance of give and take, an understanding of the properties which can move a form from perfect to disastrous in one tiny movement. For many years she worked with texture and colour on flat clay, unable to see how her love of mark making and colour could marry with the thrown form. The answer came in simplifying the thrown form to create a surface, a canvas on which to build up the richness she had achieved on my wall pieces.

Newly thrown work is left to dry a little before coloured slip is built up in layers and interspersed with marks and texture. At this stage, far from being finished, the work has yet to go through two firings which will dramatically change the nature of the clay. After the initial firing the pieces may have more layers applied in the form of oxides and two or three different glazes. All of these layers and processes combine to create a unique richness and depth to the surface.