Works on clay, paper and fabric; screen prints, etchings, linocuts and monoprints, drawings, pastels and digital drawings, by Judith Symons
Welcome to my website. Scroll the pages to find sections on what I’ve made and how I made it. If you’d like to know more, or if you’d like to consider buying a piece or commissioning a garden drawing, just get in touch in the usual way, by email to judithsymons@gmail.com.
Ceramics Prints Drawings
It’s all drawing.
All the pictures and objects I make are drawn from life, whether people or places. I’ll draw anything that moves.
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Print
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Ceramics
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Drawing
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Tablet
Prints,
including screen prints, etchings, monoprints and lino.
I produce all my prints at East London Printmakers, in Mile End in London
The screen prints shown above are on Somerset paper, Imperial size, which is 76 x 56 cm. I like it as a size for printmaking, with enough room to wander around inside.
The marks are based on very large pastel drawings done sporadically over many years. There are a couple in the section on Gardens.
Each iteration is different, because that’s where the delight is. Below is another version of the pink picture.
The marks and shapes on the imgaes below are screen printed on to coloured fabrics. I spent the earlier part of 2023 making them, and they were thrilling to make, never knowing how the colours would show themselves on colours, and layers and overlays of colours.
Thye are largish, about a metre wide and 70 cm tall. Some are stretched onto canvas, and some made into cushions.
Ceramics. Hand built objects.
I work from home and use the kiln at The Ceramics Studio Co-op in Deptford, which means that all my work so far is glazed with a simple transparent glaze, whether stoneware or earthenware.
I made this Vase in July, and here its still not properly dry. When its bisque fired and then glazed it will be shiny and a lighter, redder brown. It comes from a drawing I did last year of Susan’s garden in leafy Finchley, which you can see in the Garden pages here.
Its a coil pot, using grogged red eathemware and porcelain slip.
The most compelling aspect of making this kind of design - any design for volume really - is getting the drawing to go round and round and join up intelligently and dynamically.
Eucalyptus and bay in sgraffiti, with lustre.
Ros’s Earthenware garden bowl.
Haringay garden bottle, red earthenware, white slip and gold lustre.
Susan’s dark blue garden bowl
Ros’s painted garden bowl. Underglaze colours on white earthenware.
Stevie’s bowl. Underglaze colours on white earthenware.
Susan’s B&W garden bowl.
Gardens and Pastels
These are always made in situ, out of doors with my pastels. The garden pictures usually take one sitting of about 5 hours if the owner can accommodate me, or two shorter sittings. I might work into them at home, but there’s a risk of suffocating them. They’re all about 80 x 60 cm.
Angela’spath, with clematis.
A Finchley garden with butterflies and bees, and a sheet drying in the sun.
Nicky with her husband and daughter. we had an awning for shade.
A north London garden with the beautiful poodle Magda
Finchley garden with aerial events.
This drawing was created in June 2021, when I visited my late beloved professional supervisor in Lewes, her new home. That’s her wearing her patterened trousers, and we can also see her feet on the left.
Happily this was done in one five hour sitting in the blazing heat, and unusually I left it with her. Very often I like to spend a lot of time looking at the picture in private. But I miss it, and her.
The Red Tree
Tablet drawings
This is an assortment of the very many ipad drawings I have done since seeing Hockney’s a number of years ago.
I love doing them, and would love to show every one, so I’ll change them fron time to time.
A winter’s day on the 149.
Ash Avenue at the reconstructed Elephant and Castle.
She was upstairs on the bus on her way to work, as I was.
I guess the day had had its challenges.
My sister with Bruce, the cat.
In the corner at a corner cafe in Clapton, London.
A visitor to our Open Studios
At Heathrow. So much nicer than the airport in New York!
Talking about the work, works in progress and forthcoming events
February 2024
On the left is a quick drawing of our great local cafe, Cafe Oto in Dalston. Its a good place to draw, quiet and usually dark. The restless man on the right of both images is always there. He is comfortable there.
The vessel on the right is made of hand built white earthenware, painted in black with the light revealed.
These three vessels are new and addictive. The dessgn offers endless possibilities, proving very hard to resist.