Clementina has been a significant force in South African ceramics for the last three decades. Here is an artist working with a unique purity and vibrancy, from outside the British ceramic tradition.
‘I am in search for meaning and the expression of meaning in everyday items used for both utilitarian and ritual purposes. I am inspired philosophically by mystical traditions, also poetry and music. Visually the African urban and rural landscapes provide a source of pattern, texture and colour which I apply in my ceramic work.’
‘Clementina’s platters, bowls and cups serve as objects both for use and for contemplation… They are touched by hand and lip as well as the eye and mind… the smooth gloss interior of a plate where the food is to rest is set against the matt surface of the rim – sufficiently rough to speak of baked earth but not coarse enough to repel the hand… They are lyrical and light. They make reference to the African cultural and physical landscape in the play of colour – a dark brown of wet earth against the ochre of burnt veldt; the khaki of grass against the white of cloud, and always the grace note of that wonderful ox blood red.’
(Exhibition review by Wilma Cruise, Irma Stern Museum, Cape Town, 2005.)