Pippin Drysdale
(March 2003)

“Only twenty years ago I was finishing my Undergraduate Degree in Fine Arts” ,said Pippin, “who could have imagined the journey life has taken in this relatively short time!”.

Pippin Drysdale, Western Australian ceramicist, returned just last week from a world trip that she describes as the “best trip professionally that I could have imagined”. The journey encompassed a highly successful solo exhibition organised by the Galerie Marianne Heller at the Museum für Angewandtekunst in Frankfurt, followed by visits to Denmark, the United States and Japan. Everywhere her work was received with overwhelming enthusiasm. She felt that the international world had made her welcome with open arms.

Her new work “Tanami Traces” has sold very well indeed and will appear in a number of Museums. Articles have appeared in German and French magazines, including Neue Keramik, Januar/Februar 2003. She has invitations for international exhibitions and offers of representation from credible galleries in the United States.

Most importantly she saw her work displayed at the new Museum of Modern Art in Gifu, Japan, The Inaugural Exhibition: The Legacy of Modern Ceramic Art. The Museum houses examples of world contemporary ceramic expression and is the most important collection of its type in Japan. Three Australian artists are represented.

Last night Marianne Heller rang from Germany to say that she has selected Pippin’s work as her sole artist to be exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

The level of international reception is overwhelming. Pippin says she feels she has evoked “Open Sesame” and a veritable cave of opportunities awaits her. At the same time panic strikes. Pippin’s work is hard won. It took her fourteen months of solid work to produce the last body of work. Little of this remains. In fact the last seventeen pots will be exhibited at the BMG Art Gallery, Adelaide. More hard work beckons both for Pippin and her colleague Warick Palmateer without whom she would be unable to produce the beautiful forms, the canvases on which she depends.

Pippin acknowledges the help given her by many people in this journey. She acknowledges the enormous assistance given her by Australian granting bodies that have allowed her the time to innovate, the encouragement of Robert Bell now of the National Gallery; and Janet Mansfield , a ceramist in her own right, publisher of Ceramics: Art and Perception and countless others.

Back, literally to the grindstone, more pots in the making. The Tanami theme has proved such a success and it will continue to intrigue Pippin. Tanami represents the acme of her Australian-ness. She feels there is much to explore there still.

Pippin has been described as a “painterly” artist on numerous occasions, an expression that encapsulates her natural flamboyance and intuitive decorative style. “Tanami” is not about that. It is about a painstaking and time-greedy discipline; a science of fine glazes, incised lines and careful workings that create the essence of traceries in a constantly changing desert landscape. Yet looking at the pots they are a testimony of the struggle between a creator that is desperate to throw colour and form around on a grand scale and the discipline of the application – a struggle akin to nature itself.

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