Featured Artist Blue Fire MacMahon

Ceramic artist Blue Fire MacMahon presents a collection of whimsical sculptures that share gentle wisdom and her spiritual inspiration. Visit her website for more.

 

 

I knew as soon as I started working with clay that this medium was different from the other creative mediums I had worked in. It felt familiar, like a memory. It was in my hands, hardwired into me already.

 

 

Maybe it’s just that we humans have been working with this wet earth, shaping it, creating art with it since humans began on this earth. Or maybe there is just something in the Earth itself that naturally flows through human hands and clay out into the world.

 

 

All I know for sure is that it feels good and so satisfying to be in my studio working, my hands immersed in clay.

 

 

My father was an artist, a painter and art professor who encouraged me from the start. I followed him around with my little sketchbook. I see in those first images that I came into this life with a love for color, line and creating.

 

 

In college, I received a traditional art education studying drawing, painting, art history and an academic approach to art. Later I worked as a silk screen printer, graphic designer and commercial product photographer before I came home to clay. I’ve been enjoying creating with clay for 24 years now and feel like I’m just getting started.

 

 

I love working with color, and working with underglazes is so much like painting. This particular type of ceramic glaze is special in that what you see while applying the glaze is what you get after they are fired to 2000 degrees and become permanently part of the artwork.

 

 

The black lines are also underglaze. They emphasize the interweaving of drawing / painting 2D art with 3D art sculpture in my work.

 

 

Hikes in the beauty of the mountains here provide me with inspiration. My artwork expresses my spiritual connection with the natural world and is an integral part of my spiritual practice. I’ve studied with a spiritual teacher for 18 years and received my name, Blue Fire, 16 years ago.

 

 

I encourage viewers to hold and look closely at my artworks and observe the Mystery emerging there. That creative process can be seen in the textured surfaces, the playful colors, the finger prints in the clay, the rough bits and the smooth places; all are traces of my spiritual relationship with Creation.

 

 

I am at home when I stand openhearted, free of judgment at that doorway to the Mystery and participate in It’s unfolding.

 

Blue Fire MacMahon invites you to follower her on Facebook and Twitter and visit her Etsy shop.

 

 

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