Bio
Paul Mathieu has been a student of ceramics since 1972, in Montreal, Calgary, Stoke-on-Trent in England, and San Francisco and Los Angeles in the USA, where he received a Master of Fine Art degree (MFA) from UCLA in 1987. He has taught ceramics since 1976 in Montreal at the college and university levels, but also in Mexico and in Paris at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts. Since 1996, he has been teaching in Vancouver in the Faculty of Visual and Material Culture at the Emily Carr University.
His work has been shown internationally in numerous important exhibitions, among them Mino, Japan in 1992, 1994 and 2002, and in Korea, Taiwan, Italy, England, Australia and all over the USA and Canada. He has received numerous prizes, including the “Grand Prix des Metiers d’Art” in 1985, the Chalmers Award in Crafts in 2000 and the Sadye Bronfman Award for Excellence in Crafts and the Governor General Award in Visual Arts in 2007.
His work has been exhibited in 21 individual exhibitions since 1978, in various cities in Canada (Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver) and the USA (New-York, Los Angeles, Chicago).
His work has been the subject of many publications, reviews, articles, essays and features in magazines, catalogues and in numerous books published in Canada, the USA, in Europe, in Israel, in Japan and in China. Paul Mathieu also regularly writes about ceramics and crafts for publication in magazines and art journals. His texts have been published by Studio Potter in the USA, Ceramics: Art and Perception in Australia, La Revue de la Ceramique et du Verre in France, Keramieki Techni in Greece, and the national ceramics magazine of Israel, as well as Espace magazine, Artichoke and Contact in Canada. These essays have also been selected for inclusion in various anthologies. He is the author of a book “Sexpots: Eroticism in Ceramics”, recently published by A&C Black in England, Rutgers University Press in the USA and in a German translation by Haupt in Switzerland. It features erotic ceramics from the Neolithic to today with an emphasis on the work of upward to 100 contemporary artists from all over the world. He also recently completed a new book, an overview of the history of ceramics, with an emphasis on contemporary works. This book, “The Art of the Future: 14 essays on Ceramics”, is available on his website at www.paulmathieu.ca
He has lectured on his work as well as on various subjects related to ceramics all over Canada and the USA (the National Conference on Education in the Ceramic Arts, NCECA, on three different occasions), as well as Japan, China, France, Italy, England, Mexico and Hungary and he was keynote speaker at the Annual Ceramics Conference in Perth, Australia in 1999 and a presenter in Sydney in 2009. He has participated in long term artist residencies at the Banff Centre in Canada, the Tama Art Studios in Machida, Japan and the International Ceramics Studio in Kecskemet, Hungary, all by invitation. Since the Fall of 2003 he has made four separate stays at the San Bao International Ceramics Studio in Jingdezhen, China to research and realize new works. He continues this research to design and produce new works at the Experimental Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China, since 2006. In 2009, he participated in an experimental design residency and symposium at the Hauguang Zibo Bone China Factory, in Shandong, China.
His work is in numerous private and public collections among many others, in Canada (Musee du Quebec, Musee d’Art Contemporain, Musee des Beaux-Arts both in Montreal, and the Gardiner Museum for Ceramic Art in Toronto), in Japan (Shigaraki), in England (the Victoria nad Albert Museum) and in the USA (LA County Art Museum).