QI FANG COLBERT

Qi is a Northumberland-based, internationally exhibited artist, illustrator, and ceramicist who graduated with a PhD in Fine Art from Newcastle University in 2019.

 

Influenced by Phenomenology, Taoism, Early Renaissance art, and Surrealism, Qi creates original narrative artworks that explore a range of themes from how we interact with nature to feminist and cultural representation. Most of Qi’s works in this display explore humans’ coexistence and interaction with the natural world, and how we share and rely on the same environments and resources. Instead of searching for uniformity and certainty, Qi’s works call for curiosity about the unknown, the abnormal, and the asymmetrical through creating unique circular visual narratives that embrace an alternative way of telling stories.

 

Each of the stoneware ceramic works has been individually freehand carved using a technique that was popular during the medieval period and also in eastern cultures. Each illustration is freehand carved when the clay is leather hard and then inlaid with coloured clay slip after the bisque firing (1000°C). Some works are then hand-painted with freshly mixed underglaze colours prior to all of the works being clear glazed and fired in the kiln to 1220°C.

 

“The subject matter in my works conveys an open and quite often quirky, playful, and sometimes ironic circular narrative. Rather than following a well-planned blueprint, I let the shape of the clay or lino determine the composition. Like a spreading vine, my expressive pictures find ways to shape the object, forming the outlines and content, vice versa, to capture the flow of my consciousness, stories, and emotions.”

Dr. Qi Fang Colbert