About Laurance Simon
My work is a juggling act between painting and sculpture. It embraces the natural world. It’s a celebration of animals, plants and colours and imbued with humour and poetry.
The influences are numerous. All my work is hand-built, hand-painted and carved. The attention to detail came while travelling in Africa and India and admiring their lovingly crafted utensils for everyday use; a carved spoon or an intricately pierced vessel, a ‘flight of fancy’ candelabra. I feel as if I have somewhere in my mind a repository of images gleaned from cultures other than my own. I continue to draw inspiration from other lands which still have a strong tradition of making. My sculptures have an element of storytelling, they borrow from my love of the absurd and surrealism. The jugs I make are little clay canvases, it is almost irrelevant that one can use them. For me they marry the love of making and the love of painting.
My work has been exhibited from Belgium to the United States, is part of the V&A contemporary ceramic collection and inhabits the dwellings of customers from Reykjavik to Beijing.
RECENT EXHIBITIONS
Contemporary Applied Arts. London, UK
Josie Eastwood Fine Art. Winchester, Hampshire, UK.
Handwerkskammer. Max-Joseph St. Munich, Germany.
Highgate Contempory Art. London, UK.
Ceramic Art London. Royal College of Art. London, UK.
Automatesgalerie. Brussels, Belgium
Contemporary Ceramics Centre. London, UK.