The following article first appeared in the Winter 2007 issue of Green Pebble magazine (www.greenpebble.co.uk). Published with permission.

The writer first came to know Robin Welch as an organic vegetable gardener, a man who loves to work with the earth; then as a walker, a man who walks out over the undulating Suffolk landscapes contemplating the moods of the approaching weather. Finally he came to know of him as a potter, a man who once upon a time had produced many utilitarian pieces for the home and table but who now sculpts and paints clay.

To think of Robin as a ceramic artist is to miss the half of it. He studied as a painter and a sculptor, whilst surreptitiously learning pottery. Then he went to Australia and came in contact with the old earth and now he sculpts clay to bear the colours of the world he loves; the Australian world of earth, sky, horizon and weather.
Look down from an aeroplane and see the Australian outback -its ochres, umbers, and burnished yellows; see the song lines of Aboriginal ‘walk about’ trails cutting to the horizon and then look to Robin’s slab form pots and see the similarities. Look to the vivid stripes of white and blue vertically cutting across smudges of reds and greys on his pots and then look to aboriginal body decoration and know there is a relationship there.

Robin goes to a primordial place that very few artists are prepared to visit. He does not seek to control that place, just to record its raw power and preserve its texture, colour and shape.

In the 80s Robin demonstrated he could throw clay and turn pots with the best of them as he was then producing a vast range of popular domestic ware. Now, he has moved on to visceral forms of raw evolution - no more symmetry for symmetry’s sake.

Robin uses primarily an oil-fired kiln which he is so familiar with and has so sufficiently mastered that he has forgotten the time when he may have struggled to achieve any given glazing effect. Hopefully the lucky students of Loughborough and Trent Universities made the most of their opportunity to quiz the master when he visited them in mid November.

Robin was born in Nuneaton in 1936 and went to the Nuneaton School of Art. His first introduction to pottery was while he was studying for a Diploma in Art & Design at the Penzance School of Art. Although originally studying painting and sculpture, he began to take up pottery under the tuition of Michael Leach, Bernard's youngest son, and worked at the Leach Pottery at weekends and during holidays. He entered National Service (The Paras), in 1956 and then became a postgraduate at the Central School of Art in London under the tutelage of sculptor and painter, William Tumbull, and sculptural ceramicists Gordon Baldwin, Ian Auld, Bill Newland, Ruth Duckworth and Dan Arbeid.
In 1962 Robin moved to Australia for the first time, married Jenny Knowland, a fellow potter, and started a family. In 1983 he became the craftsman in residence in Monash University, Australia, then Indianna University and Alfred University New York, USA. Over the years Robin’s work has been added to a number of public collections including:
• Victoria and Albert Museum
• Exeter Museum
• Reading Museum
• Fitzwilliam Museum
• Bradford City Art Gallery
• The National Gallery of Victoria,Australia
• The Art Gallery of New South Wales,Australia
• Bristol Museum
• Hanley Museum
• Van Boyson Museum, Rotterdam,Holland
• Paisley Museum, Edinburgh
• Norwich Castle Museum
• Gateshead Museum

He was one of the nine potters featured in Tony Birks’ influential book 'The Art of the Modern Potter' published in 1967 where he appeared along with the likes of Lucie Rie, Hans Coper, Gordon Baldwin and Ruth Duckworth.

At a recent very successful retrospective of Robin’s work at the Rufford Craft Centre, some 200 pieces of his work were for sale. Sixty-five percent sold, mostly at the private view, and there were over 12,000 visitors. Prices ranged from £300 to £600 for his smaller vases, bowls and slab forms, to £1,500 to £2,500 for his larger bottles.
Bonhams have from time to time been instructed to sell some of Robin Welch’s pieces. Since 2005, four lots have been put up for auction at New Bond Street for prices between £600 and £1500, and six lots in Bath for between £200 and £400. Gazes, being Robin’s local auctioneers, also have a piece by him from time to time.