Heather Stone - Mixed Media Artist
heatherstone3@live.com Instagram: heatherstone999 Phone: 07796 351811
Autobiography
Born and raised in the West Country, my early working life was as a trained nurse(SRN) in Bristol before seeking change and an Art Foundation/Diploma in Art and design at Bath College. I completed a BA(Hon) Fine Art, with Plymouth University (Exeter campus) 1992, finishing in sculpture, photography and performance.
Formerly working with steel, creating 6-8ft sculptures using steel rods: forged, bent and welded assemblages - drawing in space - expansive gestures reflecting her then world - dance, movement and music - dynamic energy.
Following a decision in 2001 to move from Bristol to Bruton in the heart of Somerset and to home-school my son, life changed. Home-education became all consuming for the next 16 years. A lot of time was spent immersed in a curiosity of nature, landscape, history, archaeology and much more. So much opportunity to absorb and assimilate - to be shaped and honed by this rich experience.
On returning to my personal creative path, I am now enjoying the yielding, plasticity of clay. Unhampered by formal ceramic training, my approach is of exploration and curiosity. There is a delicious directness, immediacy and fervour using bare hands and fingertips to create my art. Pushing, squeezing, pinching the cool, gritty mud into a defined shape. Nails claw and scrape, palms caress into being.
For now, I have had enough of thinking too much. My compulsion to make, provides a distraction from pressing environmental concerns.
Sometimes quiet and intimate and other times bold and loud, primitive tools provide a vibrant, personal vocabulary. Scratching, slashing and gouging to create a highly textured and expressive surface which together with scale invites a physical interaction.
There is rarely much of a plan, sometimes a personal narrative. A rhythm of creation and destruction persists, of building up and taking away - influenced by all things weathered, broken, changed, dug up, ancient and earthy.
Each piece is hand-built and high-fired stoneware. Each has its own particular metallic resonance when finished. Depth and movement are created by painting, daubing, printing of slips, engobes, oxides and simple home-made glazes. Through multi-layering for a single glaze firing, I seek to let go of self-conciousness as each layer of glaze covers the preceding layer and so is obscured during further applications, only later to be re-revealed once fired.
I now live in Mere, on the border of Wiltshire, Dorset and Somerset. I have a studio in Gillingham.
Alongside my art practice I also teach the Feldenkrais Movement Method, helping students to regain efficient movement using increased awareness and neuro-plasticity, through touch.
A member of WESCA (Wessex Contemperary Arts) since 2019.
Travel Award Exeter College 1991
Solo Exhibitions:
‘Inish Mor, Galway’ Travel award, Exeter College foyer 1992
‘Fire My spirit’ King Street Gallery, King Street, Bristol 1993
Three person exhibition:
‘Line, Form and Colour’ Shaftesbury Art centre, 2023
Group exhibitions include:
‘Signsvsymbols’ Spacex Gallery, Exeter 1992
‘Selected Graduates’ Plymouth Art Centre 1992
‘At Ease or Dis-ease!’ Hartcliffe Women Photographers. Gallery 2, Watershed Bristol 1994
Bristol Women Artists, Create Centre Bristol 1997
Art Trails: Wylye, Stourton 2019, The Hive Artshouse, Warminster 2021 an 2023
Frome, Tyning, Great Elm, 2022 and 2024
Peacock, Town Hall, Corsham 2023
Guggleton Art Centre 2019
‘Urban Spaces’ 2021, 2 West walks, Dorchester
‘Out of the Dark’ 2022, 2 West Walks, Dorchester.
‘What on Earth’ 2023, 44AD Gallery,Bath
‘Breathless’ Shaftesbury Art Centre 2023
Contact: heatherstone3@live.com Follow on Instagram : Heatherstone999 Phone: 07796351811