Alice McIlroy
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Alice McIlroy is a ceramic artist creating sculptures of the natural world, mainly birds, exploring an underlying theme of freedom and escape. She is concerned about the declining populations of British wildlife, particularly owls, and the loss of habitats as we ‘develop’ the countryside. She uses texture to help portray movement in her subjects, making sculptures of creatures that can be difficult to see in the wild - fleeting glimpses, but full of beauty, movement and life, frozen in time to be re-viewed whenever we need to recharge.
Alice studied for an MA at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, Surrey, developing her own way of representing the world around us in clay. She has adapted an unusual firing technique from the Baltic - obvara raku - where work is removed hot from the kiln and covered in a flour and yeast mixture which sears to the surface of the work in distinctive patterns, making every piece unique. She was a student demonstrator at the International Festival of Ceramics in Aberystwyth in 2017 and went on to exhibit as a newcomer at Art in Clay Hatfield in 2018. She exhibits regularly with the Oxford Sculptors Group and has a studio near Whipsnade.
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