Urpu Sellar

Urpu was born in the 50's in Finland and studied textile design at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste Stuttgart from 1975- 79 with one year weaving at Sindelfingen.In 1980 she moved to Galloway with her husband and was a regular exhibitor with a few select Scottish galleries.She started pottery by chance about 1992 when she was looking for tiles for her bathroom without success. She decided to buy clay from a local potter to make her own but without much success. She used the wrong type of clay and it all went horribly wrong. However, she became interested in the medium and she started to experiment with clay. Combining the ceramic fish with wood, metal, glass, acrylic and anything else suitable, my work has since developed into three dimensional sculptural forms. Urpu also has a great interest in language and it's subtleties, and found English a rich source of ideas for her work, especially puns and idioms where the word has more than one spelling, but one pronunciation. Listening to people, sometimes just a slip of the tongue is enough to give her an idea.Often tongue-in-cheek, Urpu's sculptures have proved popular in galleries in Aberdeen, Glasgow and Kirkcudbright, as well as at the Glasgow Art Fair, Edinburgh Art Fair, Dublin Art Fair and the Affordable Art Fair in London.

"Someone described my work as three dimensional cartoons, which was pretty accurate I thought."