Oil and Dirt

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Clive and Virginia Pates create paintings and ceramics that relate on many levels, such as the source material of a common landscape and a richness of color and abstract form. Clive Pates’ paintings are a plein air record of the couple’s life and travels, and Virginia Pates’ ceramics are constructed of the materials that created these landscapes.Clive Pates is a gesturalist painter, unsentimentally representing his subject with brush and knife work and sculpturally describing the space of the landscape. A native of the United Kingdom, Clive has traveled and painted extended en plein air landscape in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France, Italy, Mexico, Mississippi, Colorado, Arizona and Virginia.Virginia Pates is a contemporary American ceramic artist who creates wheel-thrown and altered forms in a wide variety of clay bodies, often including ingredients from the local environment. The ceramics are glazed and fired with materials that interact with the vessel, completeing an often long and ritulistic process.

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Oil & Dirt

Works by Clive and Virginia Pates

Clive and Virginia Pates create paintings and ceramics that relate on many levels, such as the

source material of a common landscape and a richness of color and abstract form. Clive Pates’

paintings are a plein air record of the couple’s life and travels, and Virginia Pates’ ceramics are
constructed of the materials that created these landscapes.

Clive Pates is a gesturalist painter, unsentimentally representing his subject with brush and knife

Oil & Dirt

work and sculpturally describing the space of the landscape. A native of the United Kingdom,

This catalog, and many of the artworks within, were funded in part by grants from the Claudia Mitchell
Arts Fund of the Rappahannock Association for Arts and Community in Rappahannock County, Virginia,
and created for an exhibition at the R. F. Ballard Gallery in Washington, Virginia.

The ceramics are glazed and fired with materials that interact with the vessel, completeing an

The artists also wish to give sincere thanks for the support of Richard Scott and the Artistic Alliance in
County Cork, Ireland, and for the many gifts of time and space from Rancho Linda Vista arts community
in Oracle, Arizona.

Clive has traveled and painted extended en plein air landscape in England, Ireland, Scotland,
Wales, France, Italy, Mexico, Mississippi, Colorado, Arizona and Virginia.

Virginia Pates is a contemporary American ceramic artist who creates wheel-thrown and altered
forms in a wide variety of clay bodies, often including ingredients from the local environment.
often long and ritulistic process.

i. White

above and detail on cover:
Poplar| St. Benedict’s Priory, Cobh, Ireland | Oil on Linen | 85 x 70 centimeters| 2013

CW Pates: The Rhythm of Repetition
When in the creative mode, the artist (musician/painter) develops artistic fragments that they try and har-

monize together to form a final composition they feel is pleasing to the senses, be they musical notes, or color

tones from a brush. The end goal is usually an attempt to please the artist and their audience. It is my opinion
the CW Pates scores very high in achieving both.

At first glance CW Pates’ work has the visual comfort of a good backbeat rhythm, familiar as the opening

drums of a great song. One is quickly immersed into the fresh color and strong composition of shapes that
form his (from life) landscapes into a satisfying magnum opus.

When a musician writes a new song, its evolution comes from repeated performances designed to hone the

final product. Sometimes the initial composition changes radically in this feeling out process, becoming more
complex and layered, other times the progress comes with simplifying the song or the painting by pairing
away the superfluous details.

At the start of his excursion for generating a painting, Clive may wonder the countryside for days to find just

the right clump of trees, intersecting ground, water and sky to stimulate his artistic muse. This view must capture his senses completely to compel him to the visit the spot obsessively, to find a subject motivating enough
to paint the view several times from the same angle or just a few feet to the left or right.

Each successful painting can be a revelation for the artist, a series of experiences that are recorded in paint.

When trying to find a tranquil path to guide the viewer’s eye through the picture, the artist may note a brief

transition of light that then can serve as a guidepost for a pleasing center of interest that is in turn supported
by the initial compositional shapes. Building these elements may take many sittings, but Clive manages to

make final painting emerge fresh and spontaneous, veiling from the viewer the struggle of the modifications of
brushwork and color, that ultimately coalesces into the artist’s final finished sublime song.
William Wray

iv. Transfiguration Series | Avon Hall, Washington, Virginia | Oil on Linen | 36 x 28 inches | 2015

Clive William Pates: Paintings
The three years of change that brought us from Arizona and the South West were transformative in terms of

a fresh understanding of my work. A culmination of years of working series of paintings, an ever-deepening

cycle of thoughts about mark making, composition, and colour, makes for a slower process of understanding.
The last desert landscapes, their emotional significance and the ability to give them some meaning, are only
now coming into focus.

The landscape presents a natural structure that allows for multiple interpretation; each painting worked in se-

ries and built up slowly over multiple painting sessions. This way of working is not intrinsically about creating
more detail, but about the understanding and translation of an emotional dialogue between myself, the landscape, and the picture surface.

I would describe myself as a ‘gesturalist painter’. The mark making process does not give away the illusion of
detail, and does not give in lightly to inspection. I work mainly with painting knives to create a mixed surface
impasto that is complex and multi-layered. The marks are left open and unhindered in their gestured abstraction, with the point of focus a perceptual interpretation of the landscape.

The Arizona landscape focused the way I saw and interpreted my subject. The desert environment forced a

way of looking, the landscape at one moment grey and bleached by sunlight, then saturated with colour by

that same light, shadows dark and unworkable, then full of the richest hue. All this, and the brutal physicality
of the sun moving across the subject, changed each colour and shadow moment by moment. More than ever,
I had to fall back on an underlying perceptual insistence, where every mark is descriptive of the observed

landscape. Each serial painting concentrated on brief minutes of light to find some sense in a hopeless reality

of countless interpretations. Yet these paintings did not fall back on detail but became looser, the marks more
open and abstract.

In practical terms, I wanted to build a series of paintings based on the reality before me, not confined by ref-

erence points sourced from a historical dialogue on painting, nor limited by my own awkwardness and past

work. The scale of colour from the deepest broken red to the lightest sap green should exist within a complete-

ly democratic palette. Any sense of forced composition built on formal principals should give way to perceptual reality.

The point that it’s taken half a lifetime to gain any kind of workable perspective is marked by a deeper transition in emotional understanding. Moving away from a tonal vision of the world, based on hierarchy and
structure, to a way of looking based on emotional resonance. The content of the painting is taken from the

relationship between the marks and not solely from traditional ideas of representation. The fact that the works

are not abstract, but take their meaning from an abstract expressionist process, is important. The works are not
engaging with abstraction, but emerging from a twentieth century process of experimentation and a renewed

iii. Transfiguration Series | Avon Hall, Washington, Virginia | Oil on Linen | 36 x 29 inches | 2015

focus on perception, bridging the last hundred years to a small beginning in the plein-air genre.

Virginia Rood Pates: Ceramics
The material of clay and the form of a cylinder have been the basis of my studies for the past 20 years. However simple the concept, I have never become distracted from making these forms because I discover in each pot
a new challenge and a new experiment in an ongoing process of distorting clay.

My working process is influenced by the scientific method, and I use patterns of controls and variables. The

control is a wheel-thrown cylinder of clay, and everything else is variable, including me. I use many different

clay bodies, from translucent porcelains mixed and made by hand from my own recipes to dirty, recycled clay.
I often load the clay with fiber, minerals, and natural clays, which change further the nature of the clay.

Each time I make a pot I am looking and feeling for the balance between distortion and symmetry. Foreign

materials in the clay magnify the challenge of creating wheel-thrown forms because they urge the clay to warp
and collapse. This deliberate difficulty focuses my abilities, forcing me to always work at the limit of my craft,
refining the edges of what’s possible, and recovering balance from chaos.

After the clay is formed on the wheel, the pots are dried and fired on stoneware formers to allow the materials within the clay body to shift and coagulate. This refines the pot’s shape and center of gravity continually

through the drying process, and then again when the ceramic reaches plasticity during the hottest part of the
kiln firing.

I make all the glazes I use by hand from raw materials. I use complements of color and texture to reinforce and
echo the balance of contrasts in the original clay form. Firing completes the process, and I use many different

temperatures and atmospheres of kilns, sometimes on the same pot. In the same way that I am always looking
for new raw materials to add to the clay, I also experiment with glazes and firings as a way to further the dialogue within each piece of work.

Accotink Creek - Disheveled
English porcelain with raw, Irish linen
fiber and inclusions of natural clay from
Accotink Creek in Fairfax County, Virginia; wheel-thrown and altered; oxidation fired to cone 6; 7” x 11” x 11”; 2013.

i. Cultural Park Study | Sedona, Arizona | Oil on Linen | 24 x 24 inches | 2011

ii. Cultural Park Study | Sedona, Arizona | Oil on Linen | 24 x 24 inches | 2011

Verde Dirt
Grolleg porcelain with human hair and inclusions of clay collected from the Mogollon Rim
above Sedona, Arizona, and black arroyo sand collected from Rancho Linda Vista in Oracle,
Arizona, on a base of Russian River Red stoneware with 35m mullite and dirt collected from
Jerome and Clarkdale, Arizona; wheel-thrown and altered; 6 x 6 x 6 inches; fired to cone 6
oxidation; 2009.

Clarkdale Brick
Grolleg porcelain with inclusions of natural clay from the historic brick
mine on the Verde River in Clarkdale, Arizona; wheel-thrown and altered;
8 x 7 x 7 inches; fired to cone 6 Oxidation, 2011.

i. From Bird Heaven | Oak Creek at Page Springs, Arizona | Oil on Linen | 30 x 36 inches | 2009

ii. From Bird Heaven | Oak Creek at Page Springs, Arizona | Oil on Linen | 28 x 28 inches | 2009

The Crumbling Edges
of Jerome
Paper porcelain with
inclusions of rotten brick
collected from the central
steps of Jerome, Arizona; wheel-thrown and
altered; 12 x 7 x 7 inches;
fired to cone 6 oxidation;
2012.

Rio Verde
Recycled, white stoneware with inclusions of Verde River gravel from
the Verde Valley Campus of Yavapai College, Clarkdale, AZ; wheelthrown and altered; 7 x 5 x 5 inches; soda fired to cone 6; 2011.

Rain:

The Deluge

As we finished our Irish residency, the record-breaking summer of Irish sun was also ending. The rain returned, and the
sudden deluge broke through the roof of the factory where I was working, pouring over my unfired pots, filling them
with dirty water and gravel. Soaking in puddles of water should have completely dissolved the bone-dry porcelain, but I
discovered them the next day as incredibly whole. The raw linen fiber I had added to the clay was holding it like a natural
bandage, and the stoneware formers under the pots had allowed them to stiffen and dry again without collapsing. Unsure
what would happen, I left unrepaired the fractures and muddy trails from the gutters and continued on with the firing
process, salvaging the summer’s work. The pots were destroyed, but the pots were a success.
v. pates

Scarva Ming porcelain with raw
Irish linen fiber and beach glass
collected from the Holy Ground in
Cobh, Ireland; thrown, altered and
destroyed by natural events; 4 x 10
x 11 inches; oxidation fired to cone
10; 2013.

Sun:
At its best the light in the Irish landscape is bright and strong, flickering with shadows and the half thought expectancy of
its undoing. For the plein-air landscape painter, the clarity of this light is only matched by the struggle to catch each moment on canvas. Landscape painters can solve the problem of immediacy by working hard and fast, placing marks down
in two’s and three’s that trip over themselves in random succession to describe that living moment.

My working method is slower, more an act of endurance. I extend the practice of plein-air with many hours and sessions
painting on one canvas. This approach lets me watch the changing light as shadows move and sculpt the landscape. This
gives the chance to understand the subtlety of each moment, the colour and moment itself as it is flanked by different
points of time. With many hours in a painting, I don’t look for excessive detail in paint application but try to keep the
picture surface open using larger, gestural mark-making. The point of the extended application is to capture a breadth and
depth, as well as the transience.
It was with some sense of adventure that we boarded the flight at Dulles for the Cobh residency. Our recent move from
Jerome, Arizona, to Washington, DC., had left our lives scattered over a year’s journey and 3000 miles. A two-month
residency was another move that offered a chance to complete a series of paintings, and a return to Europe that was much
anticipated.
Cobh greeted us with a certain introspection. The weather had closed in, not even a blurred hint of light from the lighthouse across the Cork Harbor. I had anticipated the weather. Working many years previously in Connemara had given me
a love for the Irish landscape, and a healthy respect for the climate. But as an extended plein-air painter, my expectation
were perhaps a little too high! I started on a portrait, part of a series of portraits of my wife, with a backup plan of stilllife taken from found objects on the beach. Then the sun began to shine, first in stops and starts, casting annoying and
frequent shadows from the sky light across my composition. I ventured out into the convent garden behind the house to
start on a tentative landscape, which would certainly drive the sun away and clear up those irksome shadows from my
portrait? The sun continued to shine, and shine. After six weeks of clear weather I completed the Cobh series of landscape
with no compromise on time. So was there a certain clemency or mercy? Whatever the reason, I am grateful to Ireland for
her patience.

c. w. pates

iii. Redbud: Grey to Black | St. Benedict’s Priory, Cobh, Ireland | Oil on Linen | 70 x 70 centimeters| 2013

i. Crookbranch | Woodburn Park, Annandale, Virginia | Oil on Linen | 36 x 30 inches | 2014

ii. Crookbranch | Woodburn Park, Annandale, Virginia | Oil on Linen | 36 x 30 inches | 2014

The Lower Parking Lot
English porcelain with inclusions of micaceous red clay from the
drain below the President’s Dining Room on the Annandale Campus of Northern Virginia Community College; wheel-thrown and
altered; 9 x 10 x 10 inches; fired to cone 6 oxidation; 2014.

(right)
The Grimm’s Tennis Court

White stoneware with inclusions of red clay from Rapidan, VA;
wheel-thrown and altered; fired to cone 6 oxidation; 5” x 12” x 12”; 2015.

The Little Crack

Soldate stoneware and English porcelain with inclusions of micaceous red clay from the ditch below the
faculty parking lot on the Annandale Campus of Northern Virginia Community College; wheel-thrown
and altered; 5” x 12” x 12”; fired to cone 6 oxidation; 2015.

Clive William Pates: Paintings


Virginia Rood Pates: Ceramics


education:
1999 Master of Fine Arts in Ceramic Art, Centre for Ceramic Studies, Cardiff School of Art, University of Wales, United
Kingdom.
1995 Bachelor of Fine Arts, Mississippi State University, Starkville, Mississippi.
selected exhibitions:
2015





2014
2013

2012

2011

2010
2009
2008



Piedmont, Clive and Virginia Pates, R. H. Ballard Gallery, Washington, Virginia.
In and of the Earth, Clive and Virginia Pates, Fisher Gallery, Schlesinger Center for the Arts, Alexandria, Virginia.
Lively Experiments: NCECA Biennial, David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University, Providence, RI.
Workhouse Clay National 2015, Workhouse Arts Center, Lorton, Virginia.
New Ceramics in the Old Dominion: A Survey of Virginia Ceramics Faculty, DuPont Gallery, Mary Washington
College, Fredericksburg, Virginia.
From Oak Creek to the Accotink, Clive and Virginia Pates, Arts Center of Orange, Orange, Virginia.
Artistic Alliance: Pride 2013, Ballymaloe House, County Cork, Ireland.
Virginia Clay Invitational, The Arts Center in Orange, Virginia.
Ecumene: Global Interface in American Ceramics, International Academy of Ceramics, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Darkness and Light, Clive and Virginia Pates, RLV Gallery, Rancho Linda Vista Arts Community, Oracle, AZ.
Virginia Pates: Verde Dirt, Gallery 527, Jerome, Arizona.
All Arizona Clay, Chandler Arts Commission, Chandler, Arizona.
From Bird Heaven, Clive and Virginia Pates, RLV Gallery, Rancho Linda Vista Arts Community, Oracle, Arizona.
2009 Ceramics Biennial, Northern Arizona University Museum, Flagstaff, Arizona.
Traveling Dialogue (East), Clive and Virginia Pates, Meridian Community College, Meridian, MS.
Traveling Dialogue (West), Clive and Virginia Pates, Yavapai College, Clarkdale, AZ.
Domo Arigato: 2nd Annual Mississippi Clay Invitational, George Ohr Museum, Biloxi, MS.

residencies:
2013
2012

Artistic Alliance Residency, National Sculpture Factory, Cork, Ireland.
Resident Artist, Rancho Linda Vista, Oracle, Arizona.

awards and recognition:
2015
2015
2011
2010
2009
2008
2006


Claudia Mitchell Arts Fund Grant
Juried Member, Virginia State Center for Artisans
Merit Award for Ceramics, Chandler Arts Commission, Chandler, Arizona.
Yavapai College Institutional Grant for glaze research.
Arizona Commission on the Arts Teaching Artists Roster.
Mississippi Arts Commission Mini-Grant for Travelling Dialogue catalogue.
Andy Warhol Foundation Grant.
Mississippi Arts Commission Business Grant.

publications:
2015
2014
2013
2012
2008
2004

Lively Experiments: 2015 NCECA Biennial, Catalog to the exhibition.
The Complete Guide to Mid-Range Glazes, by John Britt. (recipe and image contributor)
Artistic Alliance: Pride, Catalog to the exhibition.
Ecumene: Global Interface in American Ceramics, Catalog to the exhibition.
Traveling Dialogue, Catalog to the exhibition. (author)
Clive Pates, Plein Air Magazine. (author)

education:
1996
1995
1993
1991

Post-Graduate Figurative Studies, Art Students League, New York, NY.
British Fulbright Scholar in Figurative Art, MFA Program, New York Academy of Art, New York, NY.
Post-Graduate Diploma in Foundry and Drawing, University of the West of England, Bristol, England.
Bachelor of Fine Arts, First Class, University of the West of England, Bristol, England.

selected exhibitions:
2015 Piedmont, Clive and Virginia Pates, R. H. Ballard Gallery, Washington, Virginia.

In and of the Earth, Clive and Virginia Pates, Fisher Gallery, Schlesinger Center for the Arts, Alexandria, Virginia.
2014 From Oak Creek to the Accotink, Clive and Virginia Pates, Arts Center of Orange, Orange, Virginia.

Clive Pates: Recent Paintings, Joie de Vivre Gallery, Cambridge, Maryland.

2014 Annual Exhibition, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, Ireland.
2013 Artistic Alliance: Pride 2013, Ballymaloe House, County Cork, Ireland.
2012 Darkness and Light, Clive and Virginia Pates, RLV Gallery, Rancho Linda Vista Arts Community, Oracle, AZ.
2010 From Bird Heaven, Clive and Virginia Pates, RLV Gallery, Rancho Linda Vista Arts Community, Oracle, Arizona.

Traveling Dialogue (East), Clive and Virginia Pates, Meridian Community College, Meridian, MS.

Traveling Dialogue (West), Clive and Virginia Pates, Yavapai College, Clarkdale, AZ.
2007 The Will to Endure, George Ohr Museum, Biloxi, Mississippi.
2004 Clive Pates: Recent Paintings, Mississippi University for Women, Columbus, Mississippi.

Clive Pates: 20 Minutes of Light, Gallery 119, Jackson, Mississippi.
2003 Clive Pates: From the Sea of Cortez to the Tombigbee River, Delta State University, Cleveland, MS.

Clive Pates: The Light in August, Sylvia Schmidt Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Clive Pates: Portraits, Rood Contemporary Fine Art, Bristol, England.

residencies:
2013 Artistic Alliance Residency, Cobh, Co. Cork, Ireland.
2012, 2010, 2008 Resident Artist, Rancho Linda Vista, Oracle, Arizona.
2010 Resident Artist, Verrocchio Arts Centre, Casole D’Elsa, Siena, Italy.
2001 Robert Fleming Residency, Hospitalfield House, Arbroath, Scotland.
2000 Roundstone Open Arts Residency, Connemara, County Galway, Ireland.
2000 Resident Artist, Verrocchio Arts Centre, Casole D’Elsa, Siena, Italy.
1999 Juliet Gomperts Tuscany Residency, Casolé d’Elsa, Siena, Italy.
awards and recognition:
2015
2010

2009
2008
2006

2005
2004
2002
1999
1996
1995



Claudia Mitchell Arts Fund Grant
Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, Mississippi: Work Placed in Permanent Collection.
Phippen Museum of Western Art, Prescott, Arizona: Work Placed in Permanent Collection.
Arizona Commission on the Arts Teaching Artists Roster.
Mississippi Arts Commission Mini-Grant for Travelling Dialogue catalogue.
Andy Warhol Foundation Grant.
Mississippi Arts Commission Business Grant.
Mississippi Arts Commission / NEA Visual Arts Fellowship Grant.
Elected to the Mississippi Artists Roster.
Third Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant.
Second Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant.
First Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant.
Fulbright Scholarship, MFA studies in Figurative Art at the New York Academy of Art.
Warhol Foundation Scholarship.
Posey Foundation Scholarship.

Clive Pates has worked as a regional editor for Fine Art Connoisseur and Plein Air Magazine, and he is currently writing for the
Artists Magazine. He paints, teaches and exhibits his work internationally.

(back cover)

Small Spaceship
Recycled stoneware;
wheel-thrown and altered;
5 x 7 x 7 inches; fired to
cone 6 oxidation; 2013.

www.clivepates.com
vii. Transfiguration Series | Avon Hall, Washington, Virginia | Oil on Linen | 28 x 28 inches | 2015

www.virginiapates.com

$15.00

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