Tim Copsey lives in the Peak District and has worked professionally as a potter since 2016. In 2019 he was awarded an artist development grant by the Arts Council of England allowing him to rebuild his wood kiln which he uses today.
Tim’s ceramics combine the opulent and the organic. The Peak District, which surrounds his home and studio, is a lively landscape filled with motion, flux, texture and luster, providing both inspiration and material. The gold and silver in Copsey’s work is a response to rushing waterfalls and the dark reflections of peat pools. The Peak’s rock formations inspire layered, undulating and coarse forms; grit, stone and granite are often folded into the surface itself. In this way, his pieces are both about and of the landscape. Whether hand-building or throwing, his process is an interaction with material, beginning with adaptations in clay; pushing each piece to the limits of stability, before investigating the interactions of glazes and the conversation with the kiln, a push and pull between control, submission and fluid transformations which are often unexpected. His process results in pieces which are mercurial: shifting with the light, modifying in each angle viewed, conversing with their environment.
