Artists: Kim Murton

Kim Murton is a ceramic artist working with low-fire terra cotta clay and colored slips.  Her colorful, cartoon-like pieces are influenced from pre-Columbian and Mexican pottery, mixed with training and work history in animation and a love of comics.  She is currently working on larger pieces, figurative busts and animals. To quote Kim, “Larger pieces require a leap of faith. Shrinkage, cracking, collapsing are all concerns when building large. Then there is the change of scale requiring a twist of the mind from small to big. I have six-legged cats and a four-legged woman. I like the stability of more legs and the humor of it not being quite right. But she also likes to work smaller. She explains that it enables her to experiment with different ideas and as a result a nature theme has emerged in the form of branches and leaves.  “All of my pieces are hand built using a groggy Terra Cotta clay body. I paint with colored slip and underglaze and finish with a clear glaze fire. Mostly I use slab construction finished off with coil shaping.”