A
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.
