“The driving force that keeps me making glass is the challenge to my personal aesthetic judgments and creative skills. As each day passes I am surprised at what I learn and the fact that it happens every day. Inspiration is a two-fold process—the external, where I live and work, my friends and family, and the internal—a desire to see a balance between the colors and the forms I work with.”

Glass is the substance of Keith Rowe’s life. From his early postgraduate days of learning to control the medium, through developing a viable and attractive commercial range of products, to his present practice as one of Australia’s most innovative practitioners, he has mastered a form of expression that celebrates the inherent characteristics of the medium. The sensation of liquidity, light, and space are all present in Rowe’s vessels.

Rowe often marries his personal attraction to the natural landscape to his innate understanding of design. Motorbike rides and driving in the country inspire his Landscape series and trips to the bush with the moonlight reflecting in the streams and rivers his Moonlight series. The basis of his Bushfire series comes from the 1993 bushfires in the Blue Mountains where ash and smoke enveloped Rowe’s studio for weeks. “The intensity of the fires was both destructive and beautiful and left an indelible impression on my visual senses. The solid color trailed onto the glass represents the flames as they burst high above the surrounding landscape.” The work itself is made using ash from the bushfires.