Artists

Peter Hayes (b. 1946)

Peter Hayes was born in Birmingham. At the age of twelve he was selected to study at the Moseley School of Art, leaving in 1961 to become a student at the Birmingham College of Art.

He spent ten years travelling in Africa, India, Nepal, Japan, Korea and New Mexico, before taking a studio in Bath. There he has developed many of the techniques and methods learnt overseas. He works predominantly in ceramics.

Hayes has exhibited extensively in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe, and in America and Japan. He has completed numerous commissions and his work can be seen in notable public collections including the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh; Museum of Modern Art, Kingston; Gardener Collection, Toronto; and Museum of Modern Art, Brussels.

'By building up layers of textured clay combined with burnishing and polishing of surfaces, I try to achieve opposites of rough and smooth. For the last two years I have been working on large scale ceramic forms which I have placed in the landscape. My main aim is that the work should not compete with nature but evolve within the environment. With the element of time and erosion the individual piece takes on its own developing surface. I still find travelling an important part of my inspiration. Recent visits to Israel, Norway, Sweden and New Mexico have had great influence on my thinking and exploration. Landscapes, textures and beachcombing all play their part in the evolution of my work' (Artist's statement).

Select Bibliography

P. Davies, St Ives Revisited: Innovators and Followers, Bakehouse, Abertillery, 1994.
G. Gallery, 'Peter Hayes', American Ceramics, February 1996.
K. Hessenberg, Ceramics for Gardens and Landscapes, A & C Black, London, 2000.
D. Jones, Raku Investigations into Fire, Crowood Press, Ramsbury, 1999.
P. Lane, Ceramic Form: Design and Decoration, A & C Black, London, 1998.