Ellen Terrell

Ellen started potting in the early 1980’s at Glasshouse Pottery on the Sunshine Coast and says she very quickly realised that ‘playing with clay’ was an addiction from which she would probably never recover! Since returning to the Daintree area in 1983 she has been able to combine the pleasures of living in the rainforest with working as a full-time artist.

The bulk of her work is thrown on the wheel, using porcelain, stoneware and midfire clays, then carving right through the clay or scratching patterns through coloured clay slips in a technique called ‘sgraffito’.

Around 2008 she began experimenting with lustre pigments made from silver & copper, and later worked with Bob Connery as her mentor, at Stokers Siding, NSW. She now produces mostly lustre-fired pots, (sometimes called Arabian smoked lustre-ware), making her own pigments and firing a third time to adhere the lustre to the already glazed pots.

For a few years she also produced work in bronze, but says she much prefers working with clay!

She participates regularly in solo and group exhibitions in North Queensland and northern NSW, including artist-in-residency projects and events such as Woodford Folk Festival. She has been a pottery & sculpture tutor at Douglas Arts Base (DAB) Mossman, since its inception 20 years ago and teaches regularly at Yalanji Arts in Mossman Gorge.