Nicola Contreras
Nicola Contreras works from her studio at East Mersea on Mersea Island, Essex, a short walk from the marshy mud flats and wide open skies of the Pyefleet Estuary. After graduating with a Fashion Design and Textiles degree she worked for ten years in fashion design and colour forecasting, which took her to India, the Far East and the USA. While living in New York for seven years she trained in ceramics and wheel throwing, and on returning to London began coiling.
Her first organic coiled work was shown at The Dagmar Gallery, Dulwich, and her first translucent porcelain at Gainsborough's House, Suffolk, in 1991. She has since exhibited at the Chelsea Crafts Fair, in Europe and the USA, and at galleries around the UK including the Yorkshire Sculpture Park Bothy Gallery (2000, and a ceramics showcase in 2016), Kenwood House in London and Leeds City Art Gallery, and in 2024 showed in Plates for Purpose - Make for Peace at Messums West. She has also always painted: after a year's painting class in Dedham with the artist Stephen Taylor she took up oils, and in 2019 and 2020 studied acrylic on paper in workshops with the abstract landscape painters Simon Carter in Colchester and David Tress in Solva, Wales.
Artist Statement
With the current headlining dark gloom happening in the world, I made the Colour Series 2023 work to recognise the light, love and colour that exists in human connections. On a personal level, the work is driven by my own connections lost and found, which can be simultaneously fragile and strong. Each work's unique outer and inner character develops through the making process. Displayed together they form sculptures about human connection, meeting, coincidence, fragility, strength and the unpredictable energy of life forces - nothing is ever straightforward.
I coil white translucent porcelain, allowing the vessel to take its own course while the shape emerges, while also looking at my sketches and drawing again through the buildup of the shape. Carefully carved and scraped, I paint the textured exterior with porcelain slip, coloured with oxides and stains, slightly burnished with a favourite stone and contrasted with different interior colour. Then all is unpredictably affected by shrinking and gaining translucency during firing.
For the White Series Vessels, I designed a collection of irregularly shaped transparent cases to contain the vessels. Arranged inside and outside, they form sculptures about connection, meeting, coincidence, water, fragility, translucency, transparency and the unpredictable energy of life forces.
