Richard Pomeroy

Richard Pomeroy 

born 1960

Lives in Bruton with his wife Helena Drysdale 

Richard moved from painting to ceramics in 2015. His daughter Tallulah had set up a pottery and when he put his thumbs in the clay he couldn’t get them out. After a year or so of experimentation he gravitated towards hand building in porcelain. He is entirely self taught - as he was as a painter. 

Porcelain is a notoriously difficult material with a mind of its own. Richard has tamed it to a degree, but his work is full of idiosyncratic wobbles and bumps that ensure that no two mugs, jugs or beakers are the same.

Colour was crucial in his work as a painter and it has maintained its importance in his ceramics. He has developed 15 colours plus black, white and transparent glaze. These colours were chosen over a long period trying out some 50 glazes before honing it down to a group that work well as individual colours and have good relationships with others in the palette. Most of his output is mugs, jugs, vases, tea and coffee pots and beakers. Recently he has returned to making art using porcelain. The clay is made into rings of colour and stacked into Totems, suitable for in or out doors. These works ensure that there are vivid colours in the garden all year round - a homage to the importance of colour in our lives.

Richard has shown his ceramics in London, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Long Island (USA). He has work in collections all over the world.

Richard founded the Richard Pomeroy Gallery now the Purdy Hicks Gallery in London in the 80s. He paints and draws all the time but actually turns to drawing as a way of going back to basecamp and gives him a time of contemplation. He starts drawing in front of the subject, so his winter beech trees are done sitting in the cold on a canvas stool until he can't hold the pencil steady! The flowers he brings into the studio, though studio in St Lucia was a balcony where he was distracted by bright lizards, microscopic spiders, giant moths, rats and the ever-present mosquito. Many of the English garden flowers, seen here, are from Penny Hobhouse's garden. He enjoys the concentration required to get the detail right and the opportunity to study these wonderful plants. He exhibits throughout the UK regularly and often in London. His work is in many collections around the world.