Early 2023 I asked tattoo artist Max Wyld if he’d be interested in drawing on my ceramics. I don’t feel the urge to paint on my pots, but I love Max’s style and I was curious to see what my pots would look like with illustrations on them. Two days later Max came over and tried some quick sketches with underglaze on bisqueware I had lying around. Since then he’s painted on cups, mugs, coasters, jugs, plates, candleholders, bowls and vases. On some pots he painted abstract elements, others have animals, faces, moons or suns.
Here's what Max says about the collab:
I love the organic forms and rich natural tones and textures Nynke creates in her ceramics and wanted my work to complement that. I used a contrasting black underglaze to the neutral creams of the clay and embraced the white space so the two can work in harmony and complement each other.
Most of the references for these pieces come from my tattooing background where I have been embracing folk art and old tattoo flash. I’m especially drawn to folk art and feel an affinity to the untrained artists and find charm in their wobbly depictions of rural and agricultural subject matter like animals and imagined flowers.
For a one day exhibition in September 2023 I made vases in different shapes, styles and sizes. I even coiled some vases by hand to really experiment with the shapes. Some were inspired by images in my head, some by other pots and some by Max’s tattoo sketches.
I’ve loved our collab since the start, but it’s reached new heights in the weeks leading up to this event. While our first collection were mainly my usual shapes which Max painted on at his own place, for this event I made vases with Max in mind and he painted them in my studio. He’d be sketching or painting the vases while I was throwing, trimming or glazing in the same space. My studio isn’t big, we were literally a meter away from each other.
I guess we both got a better understanding of how the other one works. I enjoyed seeing Max leaf through his sketchbook, coming up with ideas. Rubbing sketches of the pots before applying paint. Sometimes he’d pick a random finished pot of my shelves which shape he liked, which gave me ideas for new shapes to throw for him. Seeing him paint and seeing his designs on my pots make me look at my pots in a different way and it gives me lots of inspiration to make other pots for him.