After almost 70 years of making ceramics, Hiroe Swen has circled back to her home country and her first artistic love.
Words Emiko Davies
Photography Hana Davies
On the day I visit Hiroe Swen at her ceramics studio in Queanbeyan, I catch her in the middle of sanding fired porcelain pieces: white, powdery forms, some angular, others curved. Blank pieces, like a canvas, wait to be adorned in glazes of aquamarine, turquoise or wisps of smoky charcoal. She shows me a huge pile of Japanese washi paper where she practises her thick brushstrokes for the glazes – Hiroe began her artistic career as a painter, after all.
Then she begins unwrapping and pulling out oversized vessels that look much too large for someone of her tiny stature to be lifting, some decorated with swooping brushstrokes, others stamped with designs of birds with wings outstretched, fish or bare trees – organic and textural pieces inspired by nature.
