Cavin-Morris is pleased to announce a spotlight feature on the ceramic art of Rob Barnard.

The feeling or sense of life of a pot comes from its capacity to point beyond itself to some mysterious inner yearning that is part of the human condition.

(Rob Barnard)

The Master Japanese ceramist Yagi Kazuo with whom he studied said of Rob Barnard’s work in 1978 wrote:
I know of no other ceramicist who has closed in on the Orient as has Rob Barnard. When I first met him, his interest lay in the irrational form characteristic of Oriental Art, but in particular of Japanese pottery, and in the ‘flow’ of feeling from the artist’s heart to the work. Visually we are made to feel that Rob Barnard’s work is, at times, wild and rough, yet at other times we feel that it is an action of his abstract expressionist universe...

Mr. Barnard has glimpsed the true essence of pottery and thus entered deeply into the philosophical world. This understanding can be seen in his quiet intensity. I feel that even Japanese would profit by the deep suggestions in his recent work, which is highly unusual in that he is applying concepts evolved in modern ceramics to his work and merging them into the unchanging tradition of Japanese pottery.

Cavin-Morris was attracted to the work by its almost mystical actively silent presence, in its sheer honesty of execution and an aesthetic beauty that incorporates a sense of infinite quietude in its sometimes rough, sometimes imperfect, always successful expression of its elemental soul of earth, air, fire and water. It is almost musical in its jazz-like sense of controlled improvisation around a natural internal rhythm.

Barnard lives in the Shenandoah Valley. He began studying pottery at the University of Kentucky in 1971 and was a research student at Kyoto University of Fine Arts in Kyoto, Japan from 1974-1977, where he studied under the late Yagi Kazuo. He returned to the US in 1978.

His work is in the collections of the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum, Washington, D.C; Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY; Crocker Museum of Art, Sacramento, CA; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; Milwaukee art Museum, WI; and the Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC.