Eddie and Margaret Curtis – Earth, Memory, Transformation

The Stratford Gallery is delighted to present a brand new collection of Ceramic Art by Eddie and Margaret Curtis. 

This collection incorporates both sculptural and functional forms and vessels shaped by elemental forces, their pieces holding geological memory and the shifting textures of the natural world. 

Born from 46 years of professional artistic practice, this new body of work draws on, and celebrates, the rich diversity of landscape and its hidden treasures. 

‘We are surrounded each day by a spectrum of terrains: sometimes gentle and reassuring, at other times bleak, rugged and austere. The earth’s crust itself is testimony to aeons of upheaval, to land forms torn apart and re-forged by fire, water and wind.  There are also many instances of man’s interference and adaptations where he has strived to extract or enable his sustenance from his environ, not always in sympathy with the land but often brutally, exploiting the natural world’s delicate balance’ ( Eddie Curtis, November 2025 )

Their ceramic art recognises the impact of human intervention. Across centuries, industry and extraction have altered the land’s delicate balance, often brutally. Eddie and Margaret absorb both the beauty and the damage, distilling imagined geological impressions into intimate, concentrated ceramic form.

This recent work relies on processes that intentionally echo the extremities of nature. Blocks and sheets of clay are stretched, twisted and stressed, forcing tension into the body of the material.  Other works are loosely thrown. Surfaces are seared with intense flame, creating fissures and cracks that emulate eroded cliff faces or volcanic planes. Oxides sourced from the earth itself are layered into slips and glazes, producing dark ripples and undulating scars reminiscent of coastlines polluted by mining waste or long-abandoned industry.

A central discipline in their practice is their commitment to work with only a small number of glazes, choosing depth and intimacy over expansion. Rather than multiplying options, they refine them. Through relentless testing and observation, they uncover extraordinary nuance within this limited palette. Each firing becomes a further inquiry; each surface, a new articulation of tone, breath and depth.

Eddie’s work often suggests geological rupture: forms that appear fractured, compressed or heaved upward, carrying echoes of volcanic energy and elemental collision. Margaret’s vessels, though equally rooted in landscape, pursue a quieter rhythm. Their silhouettes are gently improvised, their textures softened by time, instinct and attentive looking. Her surfaces feel simultaneously ancient and vulnerable, as though shaped by tide, earth, fire and weather.

For all the drama of surface and process, this is not a lament for the landscape. Their work honours the resilience of the earth, its capacity for renewal, and its ability to transform trauma into new form. These pieces remind us that geology is not fixed, but alive — continually absorbing, recording and adapting.

In their hands, clay becomes a vessel for memory. Through pressure, fracture, flame and patience, Eddie and Margaret Curtis offer a vision of landscape made intimate: a sculpted reminder that our landscape is ongoing, and that within its constant reshaping lies both fragility and profound endurance.