Leo Richardson

Leo is a Brazilian/British living and working in London.

She has graduated from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in 2011 with a First Class Honours Degree in Ceramic Design.

Since graduating from her BA she has set up her ceramics studio in North London.

She has exhibited in many Art fairs in London, such as the London Design Festival and Craft Pavilion.

Since then, she has felt the need to develop and change the direction of her work.

Coming to the Royal College of Art has helped her to step into new opportunities, allowing her to expand into the process of approaching a pure experimental practice with different materials that go through a series of alchemy and transformation in the kiln during the firing process.

She has discovered a new passion for research based bodies of work, capturing time and location, investigating artist glazing and the technical qualities of ceramics. Combining soil pigments with her ceramic art, using the landscape as a source of inspiration, she has been exposed to new artistic critical thinking processes through her MA course.

Leo plans to continue and expand her research and artistic growth by doing residences, as well as discovering the beautiful qualities of each land site in order to gain further inspiration for her work.

My ceramic practice is a visual manifestation and interpretation of the theme of Art & Science within the landscape and its biodynamic cycles. The process involves collecting soil from various locations and then turning it into pigments in order to incorporate soil into an artistic and aesthetic medium.

Experiments are carried out on soil pigments, porcelain powder, oxides and glazing reactions to find different artistic possibilities. I am especially interested in observing the reactions between all these different materials when they contact each other in layers under varying temperatures. These observed reactions have exciting shapes, contours and edges that are developed through the understanding of how each material creates a surface and how it behaves in controlled conditions.

The wide range of colours and shapes are suggestive of the natural environment from which the soil samples were taken. My passion is for landscape and nature and my special interest is in exploring the basic alchemy of soil in order to produce aesthetically pleasing shapes and surfaces from soil and incorporate these into my ceramic practice.

Chromatography — Soil from Hampstead Heat on paper

Soil, Oil & Paper — Oil painting using soil as medium Size: A3 paper

Medium:

Soil pigments, paper and oil

Size:

Various

Solitude — Porcelain with reactive glaze and soil pigments. Fired at 1260°C (Close up image)

Solitude — Porcelain with reactive glaze and soil pigments. Fired at 1260°C

Porcelain with reactive glaze and soil pigments from Highgate Woods in North London.

Medium:

Porcelain with reactive glaze and soil pigments

Size:

10cm x 5cm

art & science ceramic art ceramics Circular Ceramics Colour glazes earth pigments glaze tests Handmade Layers porcelain soil pigments Terra Incognito

Wonders of Transformation — Porcelain tiles with different reactive glazes, oxides and soil pigments collected from different sites in London. Fired at 1260°C

Porcelain tiles with different reactive glazes, oxides and soil pigments collected from different sites in North London.

Medium:

Porcelain, glazes, oxides and soil pigments

Size:

Various

Ceramic Sculpture ceramics Ceramics form ceramics oxides Colour glazes Hand-marks Handcraft Landscapes porcelain Sculpture soil pigments Terra Incognito

Lunar I — Earthenware clay with reactive glazes and soil pigments. Fired at 1260°C Size: 7.5cm Diameters

Lunar II — Porcelain clay with reactive glazes and soil pigments. Fired at 1260°C Size: 13cm Diameters

Lunar III — Porcelain clay with reactive glazes and soil pigments. Fired at 1260°C Size:13cm Diameters

Gaia — Porcelain clay with reactive glazes and soil pigments. Fired at 1260°C Size: 21.5cm Diameters

Uranus — Porcelain clay with reactive glazes, soil pigments and oxides. Fired at 1260°C 21.5cm Diameters

Earthenware and porcelain clay with reactive glazes, soil pigments and different layers of oxides. Soil Collected from different sites in North London.

Fired in an electric kiln at 1260°C