In their collaborative work, mother-daughter team Alice Corbett and Lydia Corbett use their respective practices to create remarkably imaginative and textual pieces. Alice is the established fine art ceramicist and handbuilder; Lydia responsible for most of the drawn elements. Working in white stoneware, these particular pieces are often slab-built vessels and coiled sculptural forms. After the clay has become leather-hard they become three-dimensional 'canvases' for Lydia to develop with the decorative designs.
Although best known for her paintings, ceramics have played an important role in Lydia Corbett's life from a young age, working in clay before she even started painting, as the daughter of a potter. Early works are completely sculptural, typically defining little statuettes. These often became the subjects of her paintings, like props or characters upon the stage. Faces appear in her familiar style, some awake and some asleep with closed eyes. This is perhaps a reference to the artist connecting with her 'inner vision'. Lydia transfers images of memories and her imagination in a direct way by working with her hands, using the sense of touch and feel as well as vision.
Alice's work is inspired by Picasso's modernist architecture contemporaries especially Le Corbusier, Eileen Gray and Frank Lloyd Wright. These influences, along with her connection with Japanese culture and nature - long pebble beaches, shells, rocks, boulders, and cliffs - ever-changing colours and textures, by woodlands and forests are reflected both in her individual works, as well as her collaborative work with Lydia.