Low Down Articles
Artist Profiles - Paula Murray
Article 51 of 73
From the book Artists of the Gatineau Hill by Catherine Joyce. This article first appeared in the "Artist Profiles" column in the June 8, 2005 issue of the The Low Down to Hull and Back News.
Reprinted with permission. Search complete list of Low Down Articles.
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Honouring the Fragmented Earth
For over 20 years Paula Murray has created her sculpted works of fine porcelain in her studio on the shores of Meech Lake. Today her powerful pieces are receiving international acclaim. Recently elected to the Royal Canadian Acadamy of the Arts, she embodies a vision of the highest technical excellencein personal expression - a talent celebrated at the 54th International Ceramic Art Competition in Faenza, Italy in 2005, where she was one of only 96 artists selected for the biannual event from 865 applicants.
Her entry, a delicate bowl entitled Fragmenting Earth, reveals her desire to voice the vulnerable state of the fractured earth, here poised over a nest of bleached sticks and sinew. The fault lines of inner tension come through in the cracks, knit together with tenuous webbing. To look at a work like this - broken yet beautiful - is to witness the strength and fragility of our world, the precarious vessel we live upon.
"Artists are here to raise consciousness of our responsibilities - we must go to that edge to recognize what is happening to the earth. My job is to explore and express that relationship through the vocabulary of clay."
Born and raised in Ottawa, Paula first studied science at the University of Ottawa, then went on to Sheridan College's School of Crafts and Design (1977-79) and the Banff School of Fine Arts (1979-80). For extended periods of time she and her husband Jock Munro sailed with their children from Canada to South America, experiencing firsthand the elemental power of the sea and the humbling vagaries of the weather - influences that come through in her work with the tidal sweep of form and colour.
Teaching herself, Paula has evolved techniques that combine traditions of high-fired porcelain with low temperature salt glazing. Light sheets of fiberglass, delicate as spun silk, give structure and resilience to each piece.
"Porcelain is like pure spirit, always white. Pots are put in the kiln, touching each other to make a maze through which the flames must pass. Glazes speak of their journey through the transforming fire. In a sense it is mystical. You are only a player, challenged by a process where things come out better than you could ever create yourself."
She sees her work as set in a landscape, in an almost geological tension mirroring the stresses of human life. Even the language of pots - "We speak of a clay body with a foot, a belly, shoulders - these are vessels, containers for our journey" - captures this sense of fragile connectedness, of interdependence. We are the earth.
Paula values the unique expressive qualities of her sculptural pieces. In a world where technology emphasizes mass production, she cherishes the personal, the experimental, the intimate, tactile experience of her art - that need of the human hand and heart for revelation of soul.
"My relationship with this process is a very meditative one that informs my exploration of the ephemeral nature of life itself."