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Hylton Nel is a potter, painter and sculptor: a maker of earthen pots and plates and figures built and glazed and painted with a wilful but engaging oddness. His home is in the village of Bethulie in the Karoo, yet the work that he makes there seems to come from a different time and place. There is an other-worldliness about it that suggests a kinship with English pots and ancient Chinese ones, with Staffordshire figures and jade animals, but Nel’s latter day variants are always made in a manner that is uniquely his own. ‘I take both east and west as by cultural heritage’ he has said; ‘I work as best I can with the past for inspiration’. And the past is rich fuel for a rattle bag imagination in which anything and everything (people, places, books, especially books) are hoarded as a potential source. The end result is a sideways view of the world - sometimes funny, sometimes a little sad - an irreverent but intuitive combination of eccentricity and something deeply felt.
