Rachel Wood is a contemporary ceramic artist with an extensive reputation for her work in the UK and overseas. Her work is noted for its expressive, visceral, yet calm and considered qualities.
Rachel completed a BA Honours degree in Ceramics in 1999 at Loughborough College of Art and Design. A pivotal moment in her creative career was to serve as Robin Welch's apprentice in preparation for his retrospective solo exhibition at Rufford Craft Centre in 2007. An extensive international reputation ensued culminating as winner of the coveted Neue Keramik award in Germany in 2016, and the year after in 2017, the Diessen Ceramic prize, Germany.
Commitment to creative growth has always been of high priority to Rachel. She has achieved this through artist residencies within renowned schools and organisations around the world. This approach led to a major solo show in Australia in 2019.
Rachel's ceramics are host to layers of animated and complex surfaces. Swathed with layer upon layer of slip and glaze, her vessels are carefully nurtured to life, and so compel the viewer to their mysterious and hidden depths. Bowl vessels are pinched and coiled, bathed in slips and glazes, and then electric fired. Whilst her sculptural forms or Bark vessels (inspired by the eucalypts in the Australian bush) are thrown and altered to enhance the raw materiality irresistible tactile nature of the clay.
The irresistible touch of human spirit and physicality merged with the clay are the foundations of Rachel's practical and intellectual ethos. Each fingerprint, tool mark, rip and join, traces the playful trail of making with clay, just as every footstep in the landscapes of local Derbyshire and stride in the evocative Australian bush infuses the images and feelings in her head and heart. But it is not just about depicting a tactile, physical reality through this free and spontaneous process - Rachel believes that we are enticed towards a metaphysical world, where the tangible transforms to the calm and acceptance of the intangible.
Accolades:
In Germany, Rachel Wood received Die Neue Keramik prize in 2016 and then the Diessen Ceramic prize in 2017. She has been a residential tutor for artistic schools in the UK, Germany, Italy, Austria, Switzerland and Australia.