About Red Shed Pottery

About Peter and his work

Education

Peter’s artistic career began in the late 1970s at the Dunedin School of Art, at Otago Polytechnic. Having always been interested in drawing and painting, Peter was encouraged to enrol in art school by his older sister, Deborah, where he spent a year studying drawing and painting, followed by a period of overseas travel and work. 

Returning to Otago Polytechnic in 1983, Peter’s pottery career began as something of a happy accident. With no prior interest in pottery, but unable to get into the Polytechnic’s painting course, Peter enrolled in printmaking and ceramics, majoring in ceramics in his final year. 

The Polytechnic’s ceramics department was a vibrant place to be in the mid-80s, and under the tutelage of Michael Trumic and Geoff Wilson, Peter’s practice and style began to take shape. From Michael, he learnt the importance of practical forms and clear lines, and from Geoff, a DIY attitude and a love of bold decoration that is a central component of Peter’s work to this day.

Having always worked with colour in his paintings, Peter was determined to use pottery as his canvas, and began to make large-scale pots that he adorned with painterly colour – a decision that went starkly against the traditional Temuka (brown) and celadon (green) glazes that dominated ceramics at the time.

Early Career 

Upon graduating, Peter further honed his practice working in the studio of fellow Dunedin potter and ceramicist, Chris Fersterer, while also teaching part-time ceramics students at the School of Art, under the leadership of department head Neil Grant. 

Peter’s present practice began to take shape in the 1990s with the commercial availability of white clay and various colour stains, presenting him with the clean white palette he’d desired since his earlier days as a painter. Despite being advised that he wouldn’t be able to produce colours in his diesel-fired kiln, Peter’s material and technical experiments were successful and marked the start of an exploration of a bold and illustrative new style.

Throughout the 90s, Peter worked as the Resident Potter at Glenfalloch Gardens, just a short distance away on the Peninsula, and began to exhibit his work across the South Island and throughout New Zealand, winning a number of awards along the way. His time at Glenfalloch gave Peter the opportunity to sell his work directly to the public and the responsibility for running a group studio workshop.

Present Day

Upon moving to Broad Bay in 1999, Peter started Red Shed Pottery in a purpose-built red corrugated iron shed in his front yard. After switching first to an LPG-fired kiln and again to a smaller electric kiln, Peter’s work shifted away from the large ceramic canvases of his early career and focused on the domestic objects of everyday life. Spontaneous and eclectic in his approach, Peter transforms these objects into a figurative material diary of the world around him and his life on the Peninsula. Peter’s work has won praise at the national level, and he is a three-time finalist in the highly-regarded Portage Ceramic Awards, for pieces such as his 2014 entry, Sticks in a Storm, pictured below. 

Today, down in the Red Shed, Peter continues to produce a range of domestic ware and select works of art in his distinctive colour-drenched style.