About
Ali Tomlin’s work is a collection of thrown, elegant porcelain forms that form a canvas for her colourful, painterly, and graphic marks. Ali studied graphic design at Kingston before going on to have a graphic and branding business in London for twenty years. She came to ceramics following a part-time course at Putney School of Art and began to marry her love of mark-making to that of shaping forms on a wheel.
Ali throws and turns the pieces to a fine finish. She waits for the pieces to be dry before decorating, preferring to work on the dry, chalky surface. She applies her marks as spontaneously as possible, using stains, oxides and slips, splashing or sponging away areas, and inlaying lines to create pleasingly imperfect and unpredictable marks. She often decorates her pieces on the wheel to create a feeling of movement. “I like the contrast of a static object with a feeling of movement”. Some of her pieces have the impression of landscape paintings that wrap around the pots, never ending and looking slightly different from each angle. “I’ve always drawn and designed, as far back as I can remember. I love the energy of random lines or marks from a sketch, painting or found on stones or peeling paint. A simple line or splash can completely change the feeling of a piece.” Ali’s pots are left unglazed on decorated surfaces, leaving the porcelain with a smooth, paper-like, tactile quality. All her work is both to look at and to use.
