Ceramics & Painting
Work at the intersection of ceramic form and painted surface — exploring the tension between what is held inside and what is revealed.
Selected Work
About
For more than two decades, I worked as a leader in experience design, creating products, services, and environments centered on human needs. I spent those years studying how people interact with systems, spaces, and one another, gaining a deep understanding of how our surroundings profoundly shape our emotional and physical well-being.
Today, my studio practice is a natural extension of that work.
Through ceramics and painting, I explore the restorative qualities of natural forms, materials, and processes. Inspired by the rhythms of the landscape and the quiet transformations of earth, water, fire, and time, I create objects that invite presence, reflection, and a sense of ease.
Each piece is an expression of alchemy—the transformation of raw elements into forms that foster connection and well-being.
Whether placed in a home, a hospitality setting, or a shared public space, my work is created to support moments of pause and to help transform everyday environments into places of sanctuary.
I collaborate with collectors, interior designers, architects, and hospitality partners to create spaces that feel grounded, welcoming, and deeply human.
Based
Greater Philadelphia area, Pennsylvania
Education
Pratt Institute, NYC
Materials
Porcelain, oil paint, metal, pit firing
Current focus
Ceramic vessels and sculpture, seascape and pyroscape lyrical abstract painting
Artist Statement
"Creation is an act of compression — the slow thickening of light until it becomes solid enough to hold a shadow."
Each ceramic form begins as an exploration of the relationship between material, time, and human experience. Inspired by the rhythms and quiet transformations of the natural world, the work embraces the traces of process, change, and emergence.
Rather than seeking perfection, these pieces honor the subtle marks of becoming—revealing the alchemy that unfolds through the interaction of earth, water, fire, and time.
The paintings work in the same territory from the opposite direction. Where the vessels are built outward from an interior pressure, the paintings are built inward — layers of tone converging toward a horizon that refuses to resolve. Water and fire move the same way. The brushstroke that captures a wave is nearly indistinguishable from the one that captures a flame.
I am interested in memory and perception. I am interested in what survives. What remains luminous when the exterior weathers and cracks. What becomes visible in the moment of breach — not despite the weight of accumulated experience, but because of it.
Practice
01
Ceramic Forms
Hand-built and thrown on the wheel, altered objects — hollow forms, deformed spheres, collapsed vessels. Surfaces worked with tools, sponge, and hand. Unglazed, or with interior glaze where luminosity is the point. Some pieces pit fired.
02
Painting
Oil on canvas and panel. Primarily seascape and pyroscape abstraction — tonal, loose, concerned with the liminal boundary between states. A body of work in development exploring fire, light and darkness alongside the established water palette.
03
The Conversation
The ceramic and painted work are not separate practices. They share a nervous system — the same marks, the same preoccupations, the same source. Shown together, they form a single field of meaning across materials.
Contact
For inquiries about available work, commissions, or collaboration.
studio@mayrbudny.com