Irish artist Deirdre McLoughlin is a graduate from Trinity College Dublin from where, in 2021, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate.

 ‘Her art is her ‘great adventure’, in which she humbly allows the material to take her with it, not unlike a fabulous tale she beautifully recalls of those early Irish monks who sailed without oars on the Atlantic Ocean, entrusting themselves to the winds.’  Public Orator Professor Anna Chahoud

Moving to Amsterdam in the early 1970’s she was inspired by the sculptures of Rosemary Andrews to work with clay. Finding form in this medium she would eventually come to the realisation that the shapes she was making were a language of expression and were what was generally termed art. Up until then and it took some years, she had been unable to answer the on-going question from those around her - ‘why do you not make something useful’. 

The realisation brought her to work in Kyoto, which she considers to be her main study period in the field of ceramics. She set up studio and worked alongside the artists of the Sodeisha Group. The sculptures of Yasuo Hayashi in their sublime geometry and the early works of Susumu Arioka with their impossible balances have had a lasting influence on her.  After her first solo exhibition in Kyoto she travelled throughout China visiting Liling, Jingdezhen, Xian and Bezeklik.

The archetypal form, the ovoid, remains central in Deirdre McLoughlin’s work. Imbued with an intense physicality and dedication to perfection of form and surface, her sculptures are layered with meaning, charged with movement, a feeling of power, a sense of purity. Her making process is slow and demanding; initially coil built, her pieces undergo a protracted process of polishing and multiple firings. This can last for days into weeks. ‘I know a work has come to an end when an inner logic reveals itself. The work in an instance feels right.’ Deirdre McLoughlin lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.