TAM IRVING ― PAINTER, SCULPTOR, STUDIO POTTER, CERAMIC ARTIST

Tam Irving Professor Emeritus Emily Carr University of Art and Design, retired from the Institution in 1996 after teaching for 23 years in the ceramics department. He has exhibited widely and his work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Anthropology UBC; The Victoria Art Gallery; the Surrey Art Gallery; the Gardener Museum Toronto; the West Vancouver Art Gallery; the Art Gallery of Burlington Ontario; the Canadian Museum of History, Ottawa; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Over the years Tam’s work has changed, from high fire, wheel-thrown, stoneware pots to lower firing ranges using stronger colour and less emphasis on utility. He has always been interested in the beauty that can inhere in simple objects, the pursuit of which has been apparent in both his functional pottery, his ceramic wall plaques and now, in his transition to painting.