Artist Information—Gregory Fields
Born in Montreal in 1959, moved to San Francisco as an infant, I grew up in an artistic family influenced by the creativity of my father Curtis, an established California painter. Experimenting in art through my childhood and early teen years, I took up music in high school when I saw a friend playing the guitar. After graduating from San Francisco State University in 1980 and hankering for an idealistic lifestyle, I joined the monastery of the Vedanta Society of Northern California. There I lived the spiritual life for twenty-two years, during which my creative impulses found expression in singing, songwriting, and guitar playing.
After leaving the monastery in 2002 and traveling for a year, I took up art again with enthusiasm. Having settled in the beautiful Northwest and marrying my wife Marla, I spent several years focusing on sculpture, studying for some time with Seattle sculptor Kim Graham. Working out of my studio in South Seattle, the sculptural work ranged from figuratives to masks to abstracts, mostly created in fired clay.
My professional focus now lies in the field of architectural ceramics. Whether creating larger pieces such as glazed ceramic wall panels or pressing small decorative tiles out of plaster molds, I love the idea of turning earth-born clay into art through fire and heat. There is something about that ceramic transformation that reaches into the primordial elements from which we come. I hope through this process I can be of some service to people and perhaps add a little beauty to our world!