Heidi Warr Butterflies Miniature

Heidi Warr Butterflies Miniature

Heidi began her training at Yeovil College on the Art and Design course, it giving her a good foundation of skills with different art mediums. When she left college she was employed at Dennis Chinaworks in Somerset, initially to glaze pots and then moving on to become a decorator. Heidi loved the creativity of decorating and over the years progressed to the position of principal decorator. She feels privileged to know that some of her finest pieces of decoration have sold for thousands of pounds at Bohnams Auction House. Whilst decorating was exciting and fulfilling, Heidi's real passion was for designing - she felt like she was bursting with design ideas so began to create her own ceramic artwork.

All pieces are Limited Edition, made, thrown, decorated by Heidi in Somerset. 

Butterflies Miniature no 11 of 25

Inspiration; 'The Butterflies tower is based on the “butterflies” design by one of my favourite artists, MC Escher (1898-1972). Escher is one of the great artists who managed to combine symbolism and fantasy with real life.  Many of his works depict natural objects in an unnatural way and yet they are compelling to look at and excite our eye.

I chose to use Escher’s “butterflies” because butterflies to me convey a beauty of form, bursting forth with such colour and force from their cocoons. They are light and graceful and when used in the right way can create real beauty in art.  With these pieces I wanted to convey the feeling of freedom, just like the freedom I imagine could be felt by the butterflies as they move from their restrictive cocoons and into the wide blue skies.

It was challenging to use and adapt Escher’s original design to suit my application.  In particular I needed to recreate the geometric pattern to suit the edges of the top of the pieces. 

I initially experimented with tubing the design on to the butterfly towers but found that it made the butterflies lose some of their crispness and clarity. Tubing them also seemed to give them the appearance of being less graceful and ethereal.  For this reason I decided to execute all the detail with a brush

110mm high, 80mm diameter