Artworks by Sue Dunne
Sue Dunne’s work directly reflects her year-round fascination with plant life, especially when it’s wild. Integral to this involvement is her dog and their daily outings together in the countryside that surrounds both her home and her studio in Northumberland.
Over the months, seasons and years Sue is building up a ceramic library of records in the form of moulds of pressed flowers, twigs, seeds, leaves and
berries. New designs seemingly endlessly present themselves from this resource base.
When considering the potential of the plants chosen, Sue aims to represent them as closely as possible to their natural way of growing. Understanding their structures and habits helps in the simplification needed in the layout of the designs.
The starting point for all her work is the rolling out of clay. Templates are then used to cut out the shapes. These are dried very slowly either in their separate forms, or, in the case of the wall-hung work, persuaded to stay as flat as possible underweighted boards. The methods she uses ensure that each work is a separate and individual work of art rather than using ‘mass-produced’ identical moulds. Everything is twice-fired, the colour being applied before the second (glaze) firing at just under 1100 degrees.