Creative collection Meet Brisbane-based ceramicist Tracy Murray
BRISBANE CERAMICIST TRACY MURRAY TURNED TO A KILN FOR RECOVERY AND DISCOVERED A WORLD OF CREATIVITY AND PEACE SHE LOVES TO SHARE
AS TRACY MURRAY hand-builds her characterful clay creations in her home-based studio, she often looks to her outdoor sanctuary, with its rows of productive garden beds, and is reminded of the way decay can generate unexpected new life. The keen ceramicist has certainly undergone her own creative metamorphosis of late.
After Tracy was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014, she spent eight months undergoing treatment. Thankfully, this left her cancer-free, although it brought on neuropathy in her hands
– a nerve injury causing numbness and pain.
It was around this time a friend introduced Tracy to Instagram. She found herself enjoying the community and the visuals – particularly of ceramics, a medium she’d experimented with in her early 20s. “I was looking for something to combat the neuropathy, baulked at knitting, and swiftly enrolled in a six-week clay workshop with ceramic artist Clairy Laurence,” explains Tracy of her new-found skill. “Within no time I bought a second-hand kiln and that was it!”
Tracy’s husband, Wayne, then converted the undercroft of their old Queenslander into a large workspace for the then budding artist, and soon she developed a ceramics business – Shut Up & Relax – with exciting momentum, honed her personal style and attracted an engaged global following on social media. Today, she describes her process as highly intuitive, where she handbuilds one-off organic creations. “I sit with an idea for a bit, then start messing around and the clay takes its own form,” says Tracy, who works with mid-fire clays, often blending them for effect. She also loves to experiment with different glazes. “I’m a chronic glaze layerer,” she says. “If something seems not quite right when it’s been fired, I let it be for a while then reglaze and pop it back in the kiln. These are often my most popular pieces – they’re my favourites as I just can’t repeat the process!”
Tracy has enjoyed organising beginners’ clay workshops – which complement her practice – for the past 18 months and recently extended them to regional areas. The workshops arose when she had a pop-up shop in Brisbane’s West Elm store and the manager asked if she’d be interested to run some. “My first response was ‘no way’! I’d only just started back to clay myself,” she says. “But I thought about it and we kicked off the classes, which have been mostly booked out ever since.”
Tracy’s warm and encouraging demeanour obviously goes down a treat in the sessions – she has a series of workshops lined up for this year. “The part I like the best is once everyone settles in and starts making – the quiet time and the realisation it’s OK to just be,” she says. “The number of times people get the giggles when they realise the ‘shut-up-and-relax’ of it all!”
“I USUALLY WANDER DOWN TO THE STUDIO IN MY PJS AND I GET TOTALLY LOST IN IT ALL, LOSE TRACK OF TIME AND RUN LATE FOR EVERYTHING. IT’S BLISS” ~ Tracy
“I LOVE THE UNPREDICTABILITY OF CLAY – WHAT WAS ONCE A LUMP OF MUD CAN BE MANIPULATED BUT STILL RETAIN THAT STUBBORN STREAK AND BE ITSELF” ~ Tracy