ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Jennifer Alford is an award-winning Irish artist living and working in Scotland.
Jennifer grew up in Dublin and studied violin and music at the Royal Irish Academy of Music and University College Dublin. Recognising the value of a strong formal background as a bedrock for improvisation, she trained in the tradition of production pottery at the prestigious Ceramics Skills and Design Course in Thomastown, Ireland.
At the potter’s wheel, she creates contemporary ceramics in porcelain and stoneware. Leveraging abstract creative processes learned through studying and performing music, Jennifer endeavours to allow for moments of chance and the unexpected to find their way into her ceramic practice.
She lives and works from a former grain mill in the heart of the Angus countryside and is a visiting tutor at Edinburgh Ceramics workshop.
AWARDS:
Jennifer was awarded the Design and Craft Council of Ireland’s Future Maker award in 2020. Since returning to Scotland, she has been selected as one of Craft Scotland’s Emerging Makers. In 2021 she won the VACMA Emerging Maker award. In 2023 she was artist-in-residence in a collaborative project Historic Environment Scotland (HES) and Craft Scotland. She recently won the Visual Artist and Craft Makers Award which allowed her the time to research and develop a new body of work in porcelain.
Her work is in the permanent collection of the National Museum of Ireland.
STATEMENT:
My work explores surface and form, evoking the landscape through elemental glazes and instinctive mark-making.
The vessels on show were created during a period of intense making which included an artist residency with Historic Environment Scotland & Craft Scotland and a research project supported by a Visual Artist and Craft Makers Award. They reflect my ongoing fascination with the spontaneity of mark-making and technical demands of the potter’s wheel.
I absorb and process patterns and textures through photography and sketching before transferring them to three-dimensional forms. All vessels become canvasses for gestural brushwork and bold incisions. The direction of my ongoing glaze development reflects the land through earthy hues and rusty yellows, contrasted with icy blues found on the East coast of Scotland.
“When mark-making, I lose myself in the process. I experience a sense of exhilaration which I endeavour to retain in the energy of the final piece.”