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C.K.Well I studied china painting
with the North West China Painters Guild.
M.V And you said you learnt their techniques and then you went home
and did imagery that you thought would be a bit shocking. It’s a very
female dominated hobby for you isn’t it?
C.K In America certainly, but the man who brought it to America was a
German, and he brought the powdered pigments to the ladies in Minneapolis
in the 1800’s and they started china painting. In America the best china
painters are usually elderly ladies who have raised a family.
M.V As a kind of hobby activity rather than something they make a
living out of.
C.K. They treated me like a prince. I wasn’t really getting any strokes
from the Fine Art community and these ladies just doted on me.
M.V So why did you want to do china painting?
C.K I wanted to do this tribute to Kenneth Howard in a Delft style.
M.V So you had a particular project and you got into it that way?
C.K I had to find out how to get the
pigments to fuse to the ceramic surface so I could do a Delftware
portrait of Von Dutch. It was a pun on his name. Now his real name
was Kenneth Howard, but he called himself Von Dutch which I suspect was
a funny take off on Van Gogh.. So I made this tile portrait of Von Dutch
and sent it to him, but because I didn’t know how to pack ceramics properly
it arrived broken.
M.V. So what year are we in here?
C.K. 1992.
M.V. That was when you were taking up china painting?
C.K. Yeah
M.V. Really only in the ‘90’s then that you’ve been doing this?
C.K. Yes. Prior to that I was a painter.
M.V. You must also have had
to learn the techniques of slip casting and making things,
or is this fairly recent?
C.K. Fairly recent. Just this year I began slip casting my own
works.
M.V. So up until then you were using commercial white plates?
C.K. Yes. But I’m not casting plates I’m casting weaponry. I needed
to figure out how to translate the guns I wanted to decorate into china.
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