Still Life: Ceramic Artist Anna Skantz

long a quiet stretch of road in the peaceful valley of Es Capdella sits the inviting studio of ceramic artist Anna Skantz. Birds chirping, plants, flowers and views of the mountains surround the space, creating an atmosphere of pastoral calm. Inside, however, Skantz is hard at work, coiling, hand-building, painting and experimenting. Originally from Sweden, Skantz arrived in Mallorca in 1990 and settled into her studio in 2002. The space is lined with shelves that hold pieces in various states of completion from the past twenty-plus years – cups, plates, vases, sculptures and objects that show an artist constantly in motion, curious and full of ideas.

Skantz grew up among a family of creatives – like many Scandinavian artists often do – with a DIY ethos in which sewing clothes, knitting or making furniture was just part of the everyday. She took art classes and first dipped into ceramics when when she took a class at Poble Español, when it was still full of artists studios. She started making dishware - plates, cups and bowls, interested in the process of painting with slips. Early pieces reflect her Scandi-sensibility, minimal yet graphic patterning - stripes, grids and dots, figures in a landscape. She learned the wheel, but quite quickly took to hand-building and working with coils. “I learned to use the wheel, but not for very long as it didn’t attract me,” she says. “For me, coiling and hand-building is more alive. It has more texture and you can see the rhythms, marks and imprints. I feel that they are more unique.”

For over twenty years, Skantz has been experimenting with slips and glazes, finding different methods and colours that suit her ideas. In the past few years, she has been honing in on more monochromatic techniques, almost as if a painter moving from figuration into abstraction - keeping the essence of ideas yet consolidating it into something more resonant.

Photo: Duncan Kendall

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sing a dark gray French stoneware clay (but not only), she makes dozens of coils to form her vases and vessels that are slightly similar in shape, yet each one is clearly distinctive, as if a family of objects. When a collection of these forms are placed together, “I have the feeling they are talking to each other,” she says. You can sense the vibration between them, subtle imprints, variations of heights and forms, a slight belly on one, another more lithe. “When I start with something new, I have no idea what I am going to do. I know I am going to make a small or big vase or bowl or whatever, but I don’t plan the shape, height or opening. I just start and that all comes with working,” she explains. “It can also really depend on the clay. I am working and looking the whole time.”

She paints layer upon layer with a brush to get the right texture. Her palette with these pieces is muted and earth-toned: Green, terracotta, shades of white. Occasionally she’ll add in other elements such as bone ash, chermota or iron to create a reactive surface, but mostly they are kept smooth. These pieces have a quiet beauty about them. Some of the terracotta vases call to mind early Phonecian glass vials or something ancient. It is not hard to compare a collection of her monochrome vases to a still life by Giorgio Morandi, the early 20th century master still-life painter. That poetic, unexplainable force that makes the work reverberate so deeply.

Anna Skantz has exhibited at Open Studio 79 and has collaborated with Pep Not Gallery and she began working with Tado Gallery, in Madrid, in 2021. She is also working with a printmaker and developing new work that ties in the prints with ceramic objects. With patience and determination, Skantz continues to explore her medium, pushing through to new ideas yet staying true to herself. As she says, “I feel like there are so many ways of doing things, but you have to be faithful to what works for you, what speaks to you.”

@annaskantzceramics