One of the world’s premier ceramic artists hails from Knysna

Lucinda Mudge is an internationally celebrated ceramicist, a world-renown contemporary artist, whose vases, and now paintings, live in bespoke spaces all over the world – and she hails from Knysna.

Her early childhood was spent in a simple homestead with no electricity in the Knysna forest. She went to a local kindergarten in the town and to local Garden Route schools. She now lives in Keurboomstrand, Plett -  which is also home to her studio and creative sanctuary.

From the age of five she knew exactly what she was going to do with her life. “I drew a picture of me leaving with a suitcase saying I was off to art school,” she said.

She’s very family-oriented, intensely private, the way it should be, she says. The need people have to find and understand the person behind the art isn’t going to happen with Mudge who is enigmatic to say the least, just the way she likes it. “There should be some mystery and intrigue about an artist,” she says. For this reason, she does not discuss her children or private life. “I like the whole notion that I create art that people love…it’s really not about me,” says Mudge.

She admits that while she absolutely loves every bit of the creative process, until she got used to ‘traumatic exhibition openings,’ she has had to wrestle with feeling ‘like a performing monkey’ when she deals with the public. Just as well then that her mentor and fifth-generation art dealer Trent Read of Knysna Fine Art handles her exhibitions. I ask her who buys her art, mostly South Africans or overseas buyers, and she doesn’t know… she tells me to ask Read.

Her latest exhibition at Knysna Fine Art and the last one for 2024 is called Say It With Flowers. It comprises 20 of her signature vases and for the first time in an exhibit eight large paintings. During the worst of loadshedding when it wasn’t possible to fire up a kiln, Mudge says she used this difficulty to paint and these are some of the works that originated from that time.

She explains the inspiration for this year’s theme: “My vases are objects of art, but in the early days of my career South Africans (Philistines actually, although I love them dearly) used to ask me if they could use the vases for flowers and it irritated me.  But now I am over this hence Say It With Flowers. Vases are a friendly elegant and graceful object intended to live in homes, even if I write something unfriendly on them, so as long as they bring joy to someone, I can’t control what happens to them or how they are used when they leave me,” says Mudge.

The flower emojis used so prolifically on WhatsApp also inspired her and the title Say It With Flowers so happens to be the slogan of a florist.

Her paintings at this December exhibition are ‘meditative, very calm and tranquil which balances the wild shiny vases,’ she says. While they are very detailed close-up, they work differently from afar. “It’s all about how things in life work at a macro and micro level,” she explains.

Mudge’s vases are exquisite, they are also unforgettable, satirical, disturbing, visceral. It would be impossible not to feel something, a gamut of emotions, when you explore her work – and of course each one is open to interpretation be it a comment on life, politics or the human condition.

These pieces make people think, cringe, laugh, they inspire. Her vessels sometimes show barbed wire, arrows, knives and menacing beasts…conversely, they can hold images of beguiling mermaids, of flora and fauna. Her work is always ‘ravishingly beautiful’ says Read.

What Mudge particularly likes is that given the shape of a vase you can’t see the whole picture at once - and the image on the back is hidden - which is why on a piece she might have a jarring phrase or words on one side and a gentle version on the other.

Mudge graduated from the Michaelis School of Art at the University of Cape Town and specialised in photography. She then went to work in the UK and was a photographer for Ralph Lauren in London. In 2010 she came back to South Africa with her husband Sam. At the same time as being pregnant with their first child, she took a leap of faith and bought a kiln. She had no training in how to make ceramics and took to YouTube and a family-studio in Korea to find out how. “The Internet was my unorthodox teacher, but fruitful,” she said.

The road to being a celebrated artist has been a challenging one, she says. “Of 60 people who graduated in my class,  only two are practicing artists represented by galleries and one is a curator,” says Mudge expressing that it is ‘rare’ for artists to accomplish what she has.

She will always be grateful to Trent Read. “Without him, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” says Mudge explaining that Read was the catalyst to her making vases. In 2013 Read saw a collection of her drawings on flat ceramic and encouraged her to make vases.

“I joke that Trent literally found me barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen,” says Mudge. Her very first exhibition of the vases was at Knysna Fine Art, it was sold out and since then the rest is history. In the 14 very successful exhibitions since then, in South Africa and around the world, she tells me simply that none of her work comes back, it all gets sold.

Lest the creation of these vases seem whimsical or easy, Mudge explains that it’s damned hard work. She is first and foremost a mother which means her work revolves around her family. She takes her children to school in the mornings and then religiously goes into her ‘happy place’ where she works until ‘I am wrenched away from my art’ to fetch children from school.

“I am a two-feet solidly on the ground baby, a realist and I am steering a ship here, my family and my work,” is how she describes herself.

Each vase takes three months from conception to completion, but at any given time there are several on the go at varying stages of completion. “It’s a lot of pressure knowing I have an exhibit coming up…but I make sure I stay ahead of the game. I am disciplined and have strict working hours. Galleries love me because I am so organised.”

The process of creating the canvas, the actual vase structure, is not all pretty either, she tells me. “The clay is heavy, it’s hard work, I sweat, get clay under my nails.” She builds the structure by using coils of clay and layering it rather than throwing clay on a wheel, a time-consuming and very technical process since each layer needs drying time. She says that while she gets impatient with this process, the reward for her is the art work on the vases and working with colours.

No vase is a perfect shape and nor should it be, she says.

Her favourite piece? Here, she really has to think, not only because her work has been prolific, but because she seems to bond with all her vases. “Cheers To Me comes to mind because of the duality; the middle finger at the process of being created, cheers to me for creating it and cheers to the buyer for taking it.”

Trent Read says that since he first encountered Mudge’s work in the form of a ‘fairly sombre platter’ which he immediately bought because he is a self-confessed porzellankrankheit (a German word for those with an addiction to pottery), Mudge has blossomed.

“She has since shown herself to be single-minded, a perfectionist, immensely talented and one of the premier ceramic artists in the world,” he says. “Her work is edgy, lush, witty, glowing, sad, charming and feminine. I am intensely proud of her,” he says.

Mudge’s work has been on show in the UK, in Germany, in the US, in the Netherlands and in Spain at the prestigious Guggenheim Bilbao, amongst other exhibitions.

Say It With Flowers opens on December 12 and will be on exhibit for the month of December at Knysna Fine Art.

Mudge’s walk of fame:

2024 Say It With Flowers solo exhibition, Knysna Fine Art, Knysna, South Africa

2024 Does Anybody Know What’s Going On?’ solo exhibition, Everard Read, London, United Kingdom.

2023 All Is Well, solo exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa.

2023 Group exhibition, Bitches Brew, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa.

2021 Some Kind of Love, solo booth, Cologne Art and Design, with Nuweland, Germany.

2021 Nothing’s Ever Enough, Everard Read at Leeu Estates, Franschhoek, South Africa.

2021 Everything all the Time, Everard Read, London, United Kingdom.

2019 Love Story, solo exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa.

2018-19 Making Africa, group exhibition, Albuquerque Museum, New Mexico, USA.

2018-19 Making Africa group exhibition, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, USA.

2018 Space Is The Place Knysna Fine Art, Knysna, South Africa.

2018 Making Africa group exhibition, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

2018 Eternity Bam, solo booth, Investec Cape Town Art Fair, with Everard Read, Cape Town.

2017 Pixel Vases solo exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town.

2017 The Wolf Is Always Nea’, solo exhibition, Everard Read, London, United Kingdom.

2017 Investec Cape Town Art Fair, with Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2017 Making Africa group exhibition, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands.

2016 1:54 Art Fair London, with Everard Read, London, United Kingdom.

2016 VASE – Function Reviewed’, group exhibition, National Craft Gallery, Kilkenny, Ireland.

2016 FNB Joburg Art Fair, with Everard Read, Johannesburg.

2016 Making Africa group exhibition, CCCB Barcelona, Spain

2016 Kill You Eat You, solo exhibition, Everard Read, Johannesburg.

2015 Making Africa, group exhibition, Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain.

2015 Making Africa, group exhibition, Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany.