An exploration in texture and colour.

Shirley Vauvelle is a British artist whose multifaceted practice encompasses ceramics and painting. From an early age, she exhibited a natural inclination for creation—sewing dolls’ clothes and crafting objects from found natural materials like seashells. This lifelong engagement with making laid the foundation for a career that spans roles as a designer, educator, gallery owner, and now a maker and artist exhibiting work across the UK.

Shirley’s formal art education began with a foundation course at Chester College, followed by a BA (Hons) in Textile and Surface Design from Leicester Polytechnic in 1987. Her background in textiles profoundly influences her current work; she perceives a significant overlap between painting and ceramic making, often treating ceramic surfaces as canvases to explore texture, colour, and form.

Self-taught in ceramics, Shirley works from a light-filled studio in her home near the coastal town of Filey, East Yorkshire—a space that has been featured in various publications. Her ever-evolving garden is an integral part of her artistic process, filled with plants chosen for their form, texture, and colour. These botanical elements not only inspire her but are frequently incorporated into her work.

Her practice has traditionally involved creating playful component pieces combined with found materials, resulting in sculptures inspired by creatures, birds, and plants. A notable development in her work is the creation of the “Carrier Beasts,” the first forms to emerge from her concept of a tribe of creatures. She spent considerable time sketching at the Pitt Rivers Museum, drawing inspiration from collections of primitive sculptures from around the world. Particularly drawn to the fetish collections and Inuit carvings, these influences are evident in the symbolic and structural aspects of her pieces.

Shirley’s cuurrent work is now on show at The Biscuit Factory in Newcastle. It is the largest show of her work to date with drawings , sketchbooks, paintings and ceramic sculptures. The title of her solo show is Source Material. Source material is not only the earth beneath our feet – the flora and fauna that inspire; it is also memory, observation and experience. It is the landscape that shapes a palette, the objects gathered over time, the rhythms of daily practice and the quiet accumulation of moments that find their way into the work. Rather than imposing an idea onto a material, these works reveal what can happen when an artist works with its inherent qualities – allowing chance, intuition and process to become part of the final piece. These are quiet records reminding us that every work carries with it the story of its own becoming.

Read the Meet the Maker blog and watch our short film to find out more about Shirley and Source Material.