Verity Howard

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Earth materials 2023

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Verity Howard is an artist who uses clay as a medium for drawing and monoprinting to create sculptural, slab built, ceramic forms. These works explore mystery, trigger memories, generate atmosphere and evoke a sense of place. Inspiration is taken from the landscape, history and culture surrounding her in rural Herefordshire. 

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These works are part of Verity’s ‘Sacrificial Stone Series’ which centres on the research of Alfred Watkins, a Herefordian naturalist from the early 1900’s.  Watkins’ photographs and maps fascinate her, and the title for this series came from one of these maps. Verity was intrigued by the place name ‘Sacrificial Stone’, which to her evokes a sense of the surreal, stonelike, obscured and encaged. She has since been using clay to explore the images and feelings that she associates with these words.

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A stonelike surface is created on the works by applying texture and monoprint using coloured slips. Verity evokes a feeling of these forms being obscured and encaged by layering further monoprints that reference grids and meshes. When slab building, she works intuitively, cutting up slabs of clay and collaging them together to create stonelike ceramic forms.

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Verity graduated from Manchester School of Art in 2015 with a BA (Hons) Degree in Three Dimensional Design. Verity exhibits nationally and internationally including at ‘Ceramic Art Andenne’, Belgium, 2022 and in ‘New Members’ at Contemporary Ceramics, London, 2023. Verity’s work has also been featured in publications including Ceramic Review, Ceramics Art and Perception and New Ceramics.