"We want that the materials, shapes and colours, the lights and rhythms of our work, may communicate something of our feel for the world."
Satoshi Saito, Canada House, 2007
A fusion of sensibilities — personal, cultural and aesthetic — in both life and work has been the objective of the ceramic artists known professionally as Doucet-Saito. When they first met, in a pottery workshop in North Hatley, Quebec, Louise Doucet was a graduate of the School of Art and Design, Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, and Satoshi Saito was a Tokyo-born graduate student studying economics at McGill University.
Sharing a common interest in ceramics, they married and went to Japan to study with pottery masters. Returning to Canada liberated them from following any particular ceramic tradition, leaving Doucet-Saito free to draw inspiration from the great works of Oriental ceramic art as well as from ancient Pre-Columbian, Greek, Egyptian and Etruscan art.
Through their dedicated efforts to perfect their skills, research local clays, and explore the formal qualities of the ceramic medium, Doucet-Saito have achieved a sophisticated mastery of their craft. Gradually, their vessels have evolved into expressions of pure form.
Their interest lies in creating, together, ceramic works that communicate directly to the viewer something of the joy, risk and reward that is their life and art.
Selected works
