Revolve Gallery

Ailsa Nicholson

Ailsa creates a variety of decorative wheel thrown pieces and hand-built sculptures which concentrate on form rather than function and explore both negative and positive space and the movement suggested within those spaces. Clay is never weighed and work is always cut freehand to ensure each piece’s individuality.

Ailsa also makes larger scale abstract sculptures inspired largely by her fascination with the secret world of microbiology. This vast and bizarre world offers an inexhaustible supply of imagery, which complements the subtle metaphoric associations she wishes to make.

Her most recent work explores the throwing and carving of clay and celebrates the colour of the clay itself with an unglazed finish, using only beeswax to enhance the raw clay and smoke firing with salts and oxides. The use of dichroic glass fused to the raw ceramic gives the pieces an individual and jewel like quality.

Background

Although Ailsa was born in Hampton, Middlesex in 1965, she grew up in North Yorkshire, leaving the UK at 18 and travelling abroad for almost 10 years, working in many fields from a shepherdess in the mountains of Crete, to an international banker in Zurich, Switzerland. On her return to the UK, she studied psychology with the Open University whilst working as a counsellor. A pottery night class began the passion for ceramics, which led on to study a BA at Cardiff University, graduating in 1999 with a First Class Hons degree. Ailsa has now returned to North Yorkshire where she works full time from her studio just outside Whitby.

Inspiration

Ailsa takes her inspiration from many areas. A great fascination with physics and biology has led to research into fields such as microbiology, vulcanology and the structures of space. Inspiration is also drawn from great sculptural and architectural masters, past and present, such as Jean Arp, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, as well as more contemporary artists such as Jaume Plensa.

.