Richard Heeley

Richard Heeley grew up in Stoke-on-Trent, and after taking his foundation at Staffordshire University, he trained in ceramics at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has made a distinctive mark, particularly as a maker of blue and white porcelain influenced by Oriental ceramics and the traditions of Song China, Japan and most particularly Korea, assimilated into a language that is drawn from our own native landscape too, particularly that of north Wales and the Lleyn Peninsula. Here he paints and fills sketchbooks with rich source material for his pots and their deft animated brushwork in slip and cobalt; poetic foliate and fish imagery, and broader motifs of land and sea that marry East and West influences. Heeley works in Shropshire, and currently teaches at Clay College, Stoke-on-Trent.

David Whiting