Renee Kilburn

I moved from Sweden to England in 1994 to study Ceramic Design at Central saint Martin’s in London. During the summers I worked as an assistant to ceramic artist Kate Malone, where I for the first time got to experience how exuberant and large as life ceramics could be. Coming from minimalist Sweden, I had never seen pots like that before.

I achieved my BA hons degree in 1997 and took a managerial position in a traditional London pottery. Then I moved with my husband and new born baby Jack to Weston-super-Mare to set up a production studio where we tackled any ceramic product our clients wanted making, mainly cast and minimal looking things.

It is only recently that my need to create something more than minimal has exploded and my work is now handmade, tactile and oozing with colour, just like a walk in nature can be.

I focus on making a basic shape and then dressing it in hand modelled sprigs, lifting it from the surface and continuing beyond the rim, to give each piece a sense of movement.

After a while making flowers on the vases, I wanted to see how they would look as individual pieces. I set about developing designs loosely based on real flowers. To me the importance is not to duplicate nature, but to evoke in the viewer a smile that one automatically gets when seeing the wonders of colours and shapes in nature.

Renee Kilburn’s website