Terence Lee has been creating and teaching ceramic art for 40 years since he first took up this study at the California College of Art in USA in the early 1980s. He was then influenced by the American contemporary ceramics’ advocacy to create ceramics from a purely artistic and non-practical perspective. After his return to Hong Kong in 1984, his creations are known for his avant-garde works of expressionism with conceptual and rich sculptural pottery characteristics.
In the early 1990s, he came into contact with traditional Japanese and Chinese ceramics. He traveled to many ancient ceramic sites in China and Japan. He especially loved the simplicity and beauty of Song Dynasty ceramics. Contracted a rural pottery workshop in the outskirts of Taishan, Guangdong, he learned about their special techniques in collecting clay, making blanks, glazing, firing and building kilns. He experienced the wisdom and hardships of the predecessors in pottery, and realized that the promotion of ceramic art must start from living.
With 40 years of exploration and research on various aspects of ceramic art, and the knowledge and spiritual energy absorbed under different time, space and culture, he eventually returned to his own self nature. Standing among the grass and the soil, inspired to use water and clay to form a piece, to use grass and wood as fuel, and fire to burn it into immortal ceramic, is indeed a blessing. A nature lover, despite the many complicated processes of making ceramic, he enjoys the feeling of quickly shaping it with a single wave after tempering. He likes to see the essence of clay and the primitive beauty hidden in the glaze. Regardless of the elegance amidst the roughness, the joy amidst the sadness, the incompleteness unconcealed, he only hopes that the clay flowing between his thoughts and fingers in co-ordination becomes an object of harmony and beauty.