Martin pearce began his career as an interior designer in the late 70s. During this time he began collecting contemporary ceramics from fairs and galleries in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. With his father, he had thrown his first pot at age ten and ceramics over the years slowly traveled from his periphery to the forefront of his attention. In the early 90s, when a fire destroyed his studio and his archive of drawings, pearce interpreted this as a profound sign to make ceramics his full-time obsession. Delving into the aesthetic and technical aspects, he began experimenting on his own.
WORK
As an interior designer, pearce would have everything clear in his head and then draw it out. Finding the opposite is true with his ceramics; he draws by the natural process of making with less emphasis on the cerebral. His biomorphic and weighty molecular forms enclose space and volume to a consistent dramatic effect, conveying a quiet sense of the ancient and mysterious. These substantial forms are hand-built rather than thrown, using coils and strips their bold presence exudes a power, like long-lost chunks of a monolith.
From his home and studio on the south coast of England, pearce works specifically with white stoneware, vitreous slips and modified glazes finished with beeswax. Influenced by the landscape surrounding him, the hills, cliffs and beaches, the shape and foliage of the trees – which transmute through his hands into topographical forms.
Pearce has two favorite parts in the making process. The first is the point when the character of a piece breaks through, when a shape is being refined or when something unforeseen changes. The second is during the creation of a surface when deliberate mark-making is replaced with intuitive action. At both stages, a different part of his brain is tapped to create something on an intuitive level, that had not existed before.
Pearce’s freeform, organic work is highly regarded in the united kingdom’s contemporary ceramic community and has been long featured in import collections in the United States.