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| Commissions have been a bete noire for many artists, but Daly says that he is now doing quite a lot of them and finding the whole field both interesting, rewarding and challenging. Many artists have avoided them because the clients may have found that the commissioned works have failed to meet their expectations. It is rather like a game in which the client expects the artist to come up with a piece like the image that he, the client, has in his head, and often leads to frustration for the artist and disappointment for the client. Daly has dealt with the problem by engaging in a considerable degree of negotiation with the client, and has had major input into the final outcomes. He has been able, through discussion, to show the client that other shapes and colours may indeed be more appropriate than the client's original concepts, and submits suggestions and pieces in the way that a sculptor might make a maquette. This is proving to be a positive and rewarding experience for both the artist and
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| his clients. Until fairly recently, Daly has never made production line cups, saucers and plates, but now having done so for a local restaurant, has decided that he thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Daly finds inspiration in nature, but not in a direct way, so that he has not translated images from nature onto the surfaces of his work. Instead, it has worked in a more indirect way, 'a kind of osmosis'. Since he has lived in Cowra, NSW he has found the colours of that part of the country slowly emerging in his work. He has particularly responded to the different colours of gumleaves, the lovely greys, greens and pinks, all colours for which he has a strong empathy. He finds that these colours are appearing in his work in most subtle ways. He also enjoys the buttercup yellow of the vast fields of canola that grow in his area, and these colours too are beginning to find their way onto the surfaces of his pots. Sometimes he finds that a
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| small section of a piece is so interesting that he will develop that small piece into a further work, and may even repeat the process again from that previous development, taking his work into further dimensions. Early influences from his life in Melbourne still resonate through Daly's work. He grew up surrounded by lines: the tram lines, the electric wires that supply the trams with their power, the ubiquitous powerlines that run up and down every suburban street, and the wire fences of the suburbs. All of which often found their way into the fast-moving lines of his lustres. Daly also enjoys the bird's-eye view of the landscape that is to be seen when enjoying the vast panoramas from a mountain top, or when traveling by plane. The patterns in rocks, the folding of colour in stone and the stratified hues found in mountain ranges and in road cuttings through hills, have also influenced his work at various times and in various ways.
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| When asked what makes a good pot, he replies that the negative space surrounding it is probably the thing that will most make that pot work. 'When viewing a pot I always look at the negative space, especially the space around the shoulder, the rim and the lip. Where does the eye settle? These are the features that create the movement, the energy and the tension on the surface. ' He says that many people don't know how to look at a pot properly. They may see only the decoration, but the decoration must work with the form in order to create the surface movement and the tension. If the decoration is overdone or too evenly spaced, it renders the piece static. Decoration need only be the placement of one glaze over another. Further to this subject of seeing and knowing, he quotes: 'The ones who see the invisible can do the impossible'; and from The Little Prince by Saint Exupery, he quotes: 'It is only with the heart that one
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can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.' And for himself, he adds: 'The most important thing I have to work with is my intuition. There are no rules... I just do it.'
Like many things throughout all art disciplines, what makes a process work is the passion. At the conclusion of a workshop, Daly often says to the students: 'I'm now giving you permission to go home and play.' He believes that when we lose that essence, the work just becomes heavy and dead.
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| According to Daly, his exhibition at Quadrivium in 2000 represented an enjoyable and satisfying body of work that contained some pieces which unabashedly echoed work from an earlier period, some 20 or more years before, a number of which are illustrated in this article. Although he had worked these shapes and forms before, on this occasion he added tripod feet to some of them, making them sit differently in space. He combined lime green and orange, which he had never previously used, and really enjoyed the result. 'At first I rejected it,' he says, and so it sat unused in a cupboard for 15 years. He only expected ever to use it again as a liner with black, and admitted that even though the work in the Quadrivium show seemed to engage a different tangent, its evolution had begun 12 months earlier. Although Daly was not consciously revisiting earlier times, he felt quite free to play with
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| what was already there. 'I've always felt comfortable with my work. I haven't looked back and thought that anything was awful'. Daly's career has been spectacularly successful and is a wonderful example to all young ceramists of what is possible. His work has been collected by most Australian State galleries and many regional galleries. He has works in numerous overseas collections, including those of major galleries in the USA, Switzerland, the UK, France, Italy, Norway, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Hungary, Croatia, Lithuania, Canada, Japan, Taiwan, Mexico and New Zealand. In addition to receiving many prestigious awards in Australia and overseas, he has also lectured and run workshops throughout the world, presented papers at numerous conferences, and had many articles published internationally. His professional career has been truly international. He has lectured at several
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tertiary institutions and is an examiner for some of these. Currently he lectures part-time at the Canberra School of Art and Australian National University. He belongs to a number of craft organisations and is one of the few Australian members of the International Academy of Ceramics in Geneva.
Now a distinguished mid-career artist, it is difficult to foretell where Greg Daly's future might take him next. He already seems to have been everywhere. Suffice it to say, however, that we can confidently predict that his future work will continue to delight us all and enrich the tradition of contemporary studio ceramics within Australia and internationally.
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by Gordon
Foulds
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A 25-year survey exhibition of Greg Daly's work will be held at the Bathurst Regional
Art Gallery, NSW in October, 2002. For further information visit www.gregdaly.com
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