ACCOLADES TO PIPPIN DRYSDALE

The Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, Chatsworth, Derbyshire, UK:

“Getting to know Pippin as a friend and as a hugely admired artist has been the most exciting aspect of our ceramic life. We were bowled over when we first saw her work nearly 20 years ago and her new work still has that incredible ability to astonish and delight in equal measure.

“Many of her works have been on display to the hundreds of thousands of visitors who come to Chatsworth every year and they are probably the most popular of all our contemporary additions to the Collections, which span 400 years.

“Pippin the person and Pippin’s pots are equally wonderful and loveable and we are very lucky to have her in our lives.”

Colin Walker, Director, Art Gallery of Western Australia:

“The ceramic forms that emerge from Pippin’s Fremantle studio have an international reach and importance. One of Australia’s most significant artists, she has done so much to convey the complex and fragile beauty of Western Australia’s unique environment. Whether in single objects or in carefully fashioned groups, Pippin’s work opens up not only what it is to look at a landscape but to be fully within it. In this manner, she has been intently focused on making works that match the subtle nuances and rich sophistication of the places she engages with. Her cultivation of a peerless skillset and vision has been, therefore, generously expansive; it is about creating dialogues between the land of her inspiration and the people who will carry forth her concern for it.”

Linton Partington and Gary Kay, Directors, Linton & Kay Galleries:

“Pippin Drysdale is recognized as a major ceramic artist nationally and in the furthest reaches of the international ceramic world. Her critical eye ensures rigorous quality in her art practice, while the grouping of her porcelain vessels and marbles create abstract, poetic statements that exhort us all to recognize and to protect the beauty of remote Australia. Undaunted by the passing decades, she meets new challenges head on, ensuring her continued venerable status.”

Adrian Sassoon, Director, Adrian Sassoon Gallery, London:

“Happy Birthday Pippin! We wish we saw more of you and that you saw more of the many sincere admirers of your wonderful work in the UK and USA. Through your remarkable work you send so much pleasure across the world and we adore being a part of delivering that.”

Lisa Cahill, CEO and Artistic Director, Australian Design Centre:

“I am honoured to be asked to write a few words celebrating the magnificent career of Pippin Drysdale. With a masterful passion for her craft and a highly artistic perception of landscape, Pippin creates extraordinary works of sheer beauty in her unique partnership with Warrick Palmateer. In her work Granite Warriors Winborn Rocks Central Desert, currently touring in the Australian Design

Centre exhibition SIXTY: The Journal of Australian Ceramics 60th Anniversary 1962–2022, the viewer is transported by forms and colours, capturing the rocky formations and weathered fractures of a unique landform.”

John Curtin Gallery staff:

“The John Curtin Gallery has had the pleasure of working with Pippin Drysdale over two decades, holding not one but two major exhibitions of her evolving ceramic forms. In 2007 ‘Lines of Site’ featured the full range of her art practice at the time. Then in 2018 she pulled off the unthinkable and (with Warrick Palmateer’s collaboration), created the extraordinary, with over 100 new lustred marbles for the major survey, ‘Confluence’ - a vision to behold in a darkened, cavernous exhibition space. Curtin University is proud to have awarded Pippin an Honorary Doctorate in 2020, to add to her status as a WA Living Treasure.”

Eva Czernis-Ryl, Curator, Powerhouse, Sydney:

“I adore Pippin Drysdale’s gently undulating rocks, they are so caressable. Her vessels take my thoughts to places only rarely visited: each time I encounter Pippin’s exquisitely made pieces, I see miniature floating clouds (or maybe tiny tornadoes?), glowing intensely with those burned yellows, oranges, blues, greens…Their allure is overwhelming. While Pippin’s vessels seem to belong to another world, we know they are born from the artist’s deep respect for the history and unique beauty of the Australian landscape, and that is where their power comes from, that is why these works are so engaging, almost spiritual.”

Norah Ordt, former Director of Perth Galleries:

“I have known Pippin for 50+ unforgettable years and have seen and been part of the development and promotion of her extraordinarily beautiful pots, now acclaimed throughout Australia and internationally. Working with the highly talented and indispensable Warrick Palmateer, who threw the superbly shaped pots to do justice to her colours and decoration, Pip is the only WA ceramicist to date to be acclaimed a WA ‘Treasure’.

“I have also had the pleasure of representing Jeff Mincham AM in Western Australia for many, many years. His professionalism, humility and talent know no bounds. His powerful work is extraordinary and exemplary and his place as an Australian Treasure is richly deserved.”

Anna Grigson, Director, Sabbia Gallery in Sydney:

“To the magnificent Pippin Drysdale, my greatest wishes on this occasion of your 80th birthday, and what an incredible eighty years you have lived. You are one of the most passionate and determined women I have met, you are a wonderful force of nature. Your love for your family and friends is first and foremost. A beautiful and caring woman, and one to be inspired by. You are one of this country’s finest artists and will leave an immeasurable legacy for generations to come.”