In the studio -2018

After exploring the world of play and memory, Veronika Horlik’s work now focuses on the Canadian forest landscape. Observing nature’s cycles of regeneration in the face of industrial incursion and destruction, the artist creates large-scale works in her Montreal atelier.

Inspired by wooded settings where an air of devastation often intertwines with the strength and beauty of nature, Veronika Horlik embraces the field of possibilities for magnificent regeneration.

These cycles of regeneration are reflected both in the form and subject of the artist’s sculptural work in ceramics. Like a reflection of the human condition, where moments of despair and discouragement are merely temporary, her work highlights regrowth and renewal that are always just around the corner.

My ceramics practice is fundamentally craft-based. I consider the transformation of clay (as raw material), and all of the steps involved in this transformation (into ceramic), as part of the meaning imbued in the final work. I labor within the framework of David Pye’s Workmanship of Risk concept, in which “the quality of the result is not predetermined, but depends on the judgment, dexterity and care which the maker exercises as (s)he works”.
The work has the potential to be lost, transformed, or mutated at each and every step of the way. This wonderfully long and often precarious process of transforming clay into a ceramic medium allows space for intent and ideas to incubate, develop, and blossom.

The conception and shaping of my material are intertwined, where I can think with my hands and where I am conscious of both the interior space and exterior form of a piece, with the universes of materiality, intent and thought. Without this, my practice would remain stagnant.

Veronika Horlik