SURE

Kevin Petrie is Professor of Creative Practice at University of Sunderland. He studied a BA(Hons) Illustration at the University of Westminster, Harrow. Here he discovered printing onto ceramics and played with ideas about decoration through applying drawn images to ceramic objects. This led to an in MA in Ceramics and Glass at the Royal College of Art in London. Here he explored glass and combined printed drawings with glass sculpture in a series of self-portrait heads. This led to a practice based PhD in ceramics and printmaking at the Centre for Fine Print Research, University of the West of England in Bristol. Through this research he helped to develop and refine a patented water-based method of screenprinting onto ceramics. Kevin completed his PhD in 1999 and started an academic career at the turn of the millennium at University of Sunderland. Here he taught in the glass and ceramics department and was Programme Leader for the Masters programme in Glass and Ceramics for nine years and later Head of the School of Art and Design for six years. He has also supervised and examined many practice based PhDs – including several on printmaking. Kevin his known for his books Glass and Print (2006), Ceramic Transfer Printing (2011) and The Ceramics Reader (2017). He has also written on glass, ceramics and print in key journals including Printmaking Today. Kevin’s artwork is held in a number of collections including The National Museum of Scotland. He has been invited to teach and lecture in Germany, Denmark, Australia, Thailand, Canada and China. In the last few years he has moved back into painting, drawing and more recently printmaking. Recent work has been inspired by the novels and thought of Dame Iris Murdoch. Kevin first exhibited this work in his 2023 solo exhibition Other Journeys at Gateshead library. This led to an invitation to design the cover and write for the Iris Murdoch Review journal and to take part in the Iris Murdoch Podcast series. Last year he presented his work at the Eleventh International Iris Murdoch Conference, University of Chichester. He also had a solo exhibition at the Iris Murdoch Archives called Web of Life – New Prints by Kevin Petrie. Petrie’s work will feature in two forthcoming books on Murdoch by Chinese scholar Professor He Weiwen – her monograph Arts and Morals: Iris Murdoch's Fictional World and her translation of Iris Murdoch: A Life. The Flemish literary journal Deus Ex Machina has published Petrie’s drawings in their recent ‘Murdoch’ issue. Several of Petrie’s prints and a painting are now part of the Kingston University Archives and Special Collections. In 2024 Printmaking Today featured a profile on Kevin and his Murdoch inspired work by Murdoch scholar Dr Miles Leeson.