John Morgan

Apart from a few works in exhibitions most of my time since art school has been in a commercial world. Now living in France I like to make ceramic pieces on a variety of themes.The catastrophe of war or the tragedy of natural disaster for example. The drama of dreams when the mind sorts our life experience into an altogether new tapestry, is another. One beyond the control of the artists hand or eye.
I grew up in post war London and try to understand why bomb sites, now gherkins and other weird and wonderful constructions, now surround St. Pauls and the city, Here is where the Luftwaffe dropped their deadly cargo. Now I learn our bombers wrought ten times the destruction on Germany, and Churchill had ordered that St. Pauls should be saved from incendiary bombs with priority over homes. St. Pauls was a symbol of our invincibility. I remember approaching St. Pauls from Fleet Street, bomb sites all around and a railway running overhead.
Very strange.

I studied at Harrow Art School and was fortunate in having as tutors sculptors Phil Turner and Liz Frink. Liz would stroll in to the class with a cigarette in one hand and seemed to regard our work with interest, but with few comments. I was told she once said she could only teach us how to make our work stand up!
Rather less known Phil was an amiable chap who I visited a few times at his house and studio in Chelsea near the Embankment. He was working then on a stone carving for Ely Cathedral. In an unfinished state it looked wonderful. The customer however must have demanded a more polished Saint and the finished work seemed to lose its life. We see this so often and often over-do things. Stop while you can should be an artists motto!

I have had some success at the RA summer exhibition. Also in exhibitions in Sheffield.