Meet Kristin Love, Painter and PotterHELLO!!
My name is Kristin Love and I am an artist and designer residing in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. My father was in the Marines, so I spent my childhood moving quite a bit, and when I flew the coop at 18, I ended up in Boston at the Massachusetts College of Art. I majored in Illustration and Photography and over the past 25 years I have traveled extensively throughout the United States and a dozen foreign countries capturing the diverse traditions of arts and images through my photos, sketches, and journals to use as inspiration in my own designs. I consider myself a painter, more than a potter and it was through a happy accident – KISMET! – that I began to paint on clay. I look upon my clay pieces as a 3 dimensional, geometric canvas, therefore whatever design I draw in pencil on that piece is inspired by its form, and, actually, on numerous occasions I have built a piece with a particular painting in mind. It's a very wonderful and symbiotic relationship between 3D form and 2D image! ALL of my clay pieces are ORIGINAL hand built, press molded or slip cast by me. The only exceptions to this are the wheel thrown pieces which are created for me by a wonderful friend and master potter, Vicki Hamilton. ALL of my clay pieces are bisque fired first to cone 05 so that I may have a solid surface on which to do my paintings. In order to achieve the brilliant colors you see on my finished work I use 3 layers of underglazes when I paint and then, using a teeny, tiny little brush with about 2 bristles, I outline the design with black to really make the images POP!! Since I view each of my clay pieces as a painting, I title each and sign and date it before applying 2 coats of clear glaze and then firing it again to cone 06. I NEVER use decals, stencils or any other prefabricated images, insuring the individuality of each piece and because each is unique, my prices reflect the time I give to each not necessarily the size of the clay art.
I hope you enjoy looking at my colorful art as much as I loved creating it!! My work is a celebration of the eclectic, colorful, and passionate world we all live in, and a joyful salutation to the artist in all of us.
Click here to visit Kristen's work: in Handcrafted Ceramics & Pottery at Lady Nin's Art Festival
