'I am driven by the need to achieve a sense of place in the landscape. My life has been focused on setting up a studio in the right surroundings to help me produce the work I need to make. My surroundings at the Hempmill are heady - wild, rural and beautiful - and I hope my pots are evidence of this holistic way of living.
The elemental aspect of working with clay encourages me to form an intimate relationship with the landscape that I live in and travel through. My pots represent many years of trying to achieve a way of making that gives me faith in my belief that the potter has an affinity with the landscape; working with water, earth, fire, wood, salt, metal and stone. Each element of this palette needs a level of understanding and sensitive handling in their use.
I use a momentum wheel to help develop the confident harmonious rhythm which is needed to create this type of work. I try and match this surface quality with fluid brush strokes that sketch the surface of my pots. A walking line that records my journey.'

Richard Heeley


Glowing with Life
'Richard Heeley has been preparing the ground for his exhibition 'Landscapes in Fire & Water' (Stratford Gallery 2021), for many years. He has relentlessly pursued the acquisition of an intimate understanding of his craft and subsequently the pots in this show definitely glow with life. Heeley's pots display a level of maturity that reflects this hard won knowledge. In particular he has a sense of form that is intuitive, which brings both strength and elegance to his pots in equal measure. It's easy to say this but so difficult to achieve.
The strength I refer to is seen in the decision making that goes into relative proportions within a pot. There is no hesitancy or uncertainty coming from the making. Decisions are taken about scale form and proportion based on intuition and prior experience. This makes for strong decisive form which suit the kinds of things he is making.
The elegance comes in development through the processes he uses to complete the pots. The woodfired forms are enhanced by the kiln but this potentially destructive technique is tempered through his careful handling of placement and firing method. So much anagama fired work; which has become very popular in recent years; is crude by comparison. Heeley understands that the potter needs to approach extended woodfiring as a tool, which must be carefully monitored and coaxed to get a result that is a true collaboration between potter, pot and kiln. His woodfired forms therefore epitomise the strength and elegance of the finest exponents of this much maligned methodology.
The same strength and elegance is present in his signature cobalt painted work that he is well known for. He makes forms that invite decorative treatment rather than trying to decorate any pot that comes to hand. He is able to make counter-play between form and brushstroke that brings delight when the piece is turned around in the hand. This strength has also been hard won, its root being in his commitment to drawing and research that has been with him from the outset. His vocabulary of marks is derived from observation of nature and understanding of what the ceramic form may invite if it is scrutinised properly.
And the result of all this effort may be seen in the mature works produced for this seminal exhibition. I use the word seminal because I believe future curators, perhaps preparing a retrospective, will reference this moment as one that saw the coming together of all those aspects he has engaged with in order to engender the circumstances from which his most creative work may emerge. If you admire this work then you should not miss the opportunity to acquire some of it from this particular exhibition which will go down as a marker in the emergence of an outstanding talent.'

Alex McErlain, September 2021