Tactile Scene

Cate van Alphen hasn’t been working with polymer for very long but her background in numerous other mediums has assisted and influenced her polymer creations. Her experience in painting is obvious in this donut pendant.

Cate says this was inspired by a painting by Maurice Utrillo, a French painter that worked primarily in the first half of the 20th century. The heavy tactile nature she gets from manually manipulating the clay rather than using stamps or other machined imagery reminds me of heavy impatso painting where the texture itself is part of the design and draw, as it is here.

So, enjoy a little scenery and the idea of manually working your clay in the purest sense.