Sketchbook: Caroline Cole

I explore my creativity through ceramics. I use my sketchbooks to record inspiration from the world around me but also to test shapes and patterns that evolve from my observations and musings.

There is a logic to my work that comes from a balance between art and science and there is no doubt this is influenced by my architectural background and my training at the Cambridge University School of Architecture, which imposed a rigour on my thinking.

However, it also draws on other dynamic influences in my life that allow a freedom of expression and a joy in pattern-making and colour. 

Those of my sketches that are inspired by a place do not attempt to recreate a scene. Rather, they draw on patterns and colours to recreate a mood. I am interested in the coming together of shape, colour, texture and surface and in how the interactions between these primal elements can achieve a harmonious sense of order when combined with geometries and pattern work.

Other sketches explore the way that gradations of colour and chromatic layering can produce trompe l’oeil and three-dimensional images on a flat surface to create a meditative state that encourages the viewer to go beyond the pattern.

Over the years my sketchbooks have become a detailed library, documenting the inspiration for each ceramic piece, the geometry of the patterns and the combinations of the different glazes and underglazes used to create individual pots. As such, they are invaluable to me.

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