Claudia Wilson

Artist Statement

Claudia Wilson is a German-born ceramic artist based in Southern California. Her work explores the female body as a vessel. All of the aspects of being imperfect, evolving and marked by life. Through clay, paint, and photography, she creates pieces that resist idealization. Instead, her art embraces vulnerability and transformation. It begs quietly to simply exist. Claudia showed promise of being and artist from a young age. Germany does not value or push young artists to pursue art education. Claudia was guided toward early childhood education instead. In 1990, during a scouting exchange, she met her future husband, an American art student. They built a long-distance relationship through letters, and in 1993 she spent a year in the U.S. to be closer to him. In that year, she completed her high school diploma and by the end of the year he proposed. Claudia moved to Stevens Point with him and with his encouragement, she began studying fine art at the University as well. When he graduated, they relocated to California, where Claudia paused her education to raise their four children. Decades later, with her children grown, she returned to her studies and finally earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Spring 2025. Her recent body of work, I Don’t Like Cut Flowers, is a sculptural series that reclaims the female form from objectification. Rooted in both personal narrative and collective experience, her work invites reflection on body, identity and autonomy.

In her own words, Wilson explains:  My creative process is an intuitive dialogue with materials. I begin with an idea or feeling. I can get quite obsessed at this stage. Once I start to create, I feel deep joy in witnessing my ideas becoming reality. I purposely don’t control the outcome. Instead, I follow the responses of my materials, enjoying the tactile feel and allowing small accidents to surprises and guide me. Each mark emerges from this ongoing conversation. I like to call it a sort of dance between intention and chance and between me and the material. I embrace the unpredictability of working with natural materials and mixed media, knowing that the work’s truth reveals itself through this openness. The process is not linear. It seems to grow out of built-up layer that are altered, and sometimes even erased. This journey of discovery allows the final work to become something honest and unexpected. 

The paintings in this series began on canvases that already carried their own story. I up cycled used canvases which acted like the existing landscape where I placed my sculpture. I added my impressions from the trip and chose to leave parts of the original painting to be part of the final image. I felt this reflected my experience very well.