Robin Welch

Robin Welch (1936-2019) was a versatile potter who began his career as a fine thrower and designer, and completed it as an artist who inventively combined throwing with hand-building and constructed elements. Having served an apprenticeship making successful domestic wares and individual pieces, by the 1980s he was exploring the freer forms and ‘canvas’ of his pots, using surface marking and colouration to evoke aspects of the landscape, particularly that of Australia, where he was briefly based in the early 1960s before settling in Suffolk. He often combined wheel-thrown bases with coiled or slab-built upper sections, the pots often repeatedly fired to add patina and depth. His abstract marking, palette and sense of texture indicated his increasing concerns as a painter.

Robin’s work reflected a wide-ranging education which began in Nuneaton and ended at the Central School in London, via tuition with the Leach family and a period at Penzance School of Art. This gave him considerable two and three dimensional skills, and his later ceramic exhibitions were often complemented by his equally expansive and meditative pictures.