Q: Your work doesn’t seem to follow one obvious visual style. Does that bother you?

Kylie: It used to. I thought being an artist meant eventually finding a recognisable style and staying there. But that doesn’t really make sense to me anymore. I’m not the same person every day, so why would the work be? My mood changes, my interests change, what I’m processing changes. The creatures don’t need to look related because the psyche isn’t stylistically consistent either. I think the consistency is in how I work, rather than what the finished objects look like.

Q: So what is consistent about the way you work?

Kylie: I usually don’t know exactly what I’m making when I start. I’ll have a lump of clay and maybe a vague feeling or an idea, but I try not to control it too quickly. Quite often a face comes first. Once the face is there, I start asking questions. Who are you? What sort of body do you need? Are you ridiculous? Are you serious? Do you need four legs or wheels or a tiny person sitting on your back? It becomes a conversation.

Q: Do you literally feel like the sculpture has a personality?

Kylie: Absolutely. Which sounds slightly weird when you say it out loud. But once a face appears, I find it very difficult to treat it like an object anymore. Some of them are immediately cheeky. Some are vulnerable. Some are quite watchful. Occasionally one seems deeply unimpressed with me. I’m not inventing an elaborate biography for every piece, but I do feel like I’m discovering something rather than designing it.

Q: Your background is in transpersonal art therapy. How much does that influence the ceramics?

Kylie: A lot, although probably not in an obvious way. During my training I became really interested in Jung, symbolism, archetypes and the unconscious. In art therapy you learn not to rush in and interpret everything. You allow imagery to emerge first. I think I make ceramics in a similar way. I don’t sit down and decide, “I’m going to make something about the Shadow today.” That would kill it for me. I make the thing, and sometimes later I realise what I’ve been working with.

Q: What do you mean by “the unconscious” in relation to clay?

Kylie: I think our conscious mind wants everything to make sense. It likes neat explanations and categories. Clay doesn’t really care about that. Your hands can make something before your brain understands why it’s making it. That’s the bit I’m interested in. Sometimes an image or symbol keeps appearing and I have no idea why. I’d rather stay curious about that than immediately give it a meaning.

Q: There’s a lot of humour in the work too.

Kylie: There has to be. I’m interested in psychological and spiritual things, but I have absolutely no desire to become unbearably serious about them. A creature can represent vulnerability or transformation and still have three teeth and a ridiculous bum. I like that combination.

Q: Sacred and ridiculous at the same time?

Kylie: Exactly. I think humans are like that anyway. We can be having some enormous existential crisis while also wondering what’s for dinner. I don’t see humour as undermining the deeper part of the work. Sometimes humour actually makes it possible to go near something more vulnerable.

Q: Your creatures often sit somewhere between human and animal. Why do you keep returning to that?

Kylie: I’m not completely sure, which is probably why I keep doing it. I like things that resist easy categorisation. Human but not human. Animal but not quite animal. Object, character, guardian, toy, artefact — somewhere between all of those things. Once something becomes too easily identifiable, I become less interested.

Q: Is that why there are sometimes wheels, third eyes, unusual limbs or strange appendages?

Kylie: Probably. I love the moment where something starts to become a little bit wrong. Not horror-movie wrong. Just enough that you have to look twice. A perfectly normal four-legged animal doesn’t interest me as much as one with two legs and enormous ceramic wheels where the back legs should be.

Q: You’ve described some of your pieces as guardians. What are they guarding?

Kylie: Sometimes I don’t know. Memories, perhaps. Forgotten parts of ourselves. Things that haven’t quite become conscious yet. Some of the forest creatures feel like they’re carrying things — found objects, old stories, bits of knowledge. I’m drawn to the idea that something insignificant-looking could be responsible for something enormous.

Q: There are recurring symbols in your work. Do they have fixed meanings?

Kylie: Not usually. I actually resist giving them fixed meanings. A symbol becomes less interesting to me when I say, “This always means this.” Symbols are slippery. They change depending on the person looking at them and depending on what’s happening around them. I’d rather they operate like fragments of a language that nobody fully remembers.

Q: That sounds almost archaeological.

Kylie: Yes. I like the idea of things looking discovered rather than manufactured. Like someone pulled them out of mud somewhere and no one quite knows what culture they belonged to or what their purpose was. Except mine are often brightly coloured and occasionally look like idiots.

Q: Do you consider yourself a spiritual artist?

Kylie: I’m interested in spirituality, but I’m cautious about the word because it can mean almost anything. I’m interested in inner experience, mystery, ritual, symbolism, intuition and things we can’t necessarily explain rationally. But I don’t want to tell people what to believe. I’d much rather make something that makes someone feel something they can’t quite name.

Q: You sometimes leave areas of raw clay beside brightly coloured glossy surfaces. What interests you about that contrast?

Kylie: I love the difference between what is exposed and what is presented. Raw clay feels vulnerable to me. It shows itself very plainly. Then you can have this elaborate colourful surface beside it — almost like clothing, persona or armour. I’ve been playing with that idea a lot. What do we decorate? What do we protect? What do we leave uncovered?

Q: Is there a connection there to Jung’s idea of the persona?

Kylie: Definitely, although again I’d rather the work experience come first and the theory afterwards. The persona is the face we present to the world. We need it; it isn’t inherently false. But underneath it there are all these other parts of us. I’m interested in that tension between the decorated self and the raw self.

Q: You’ve even made creatures carrying smaller raw versions of themselves.

Kylie: Yes. I loved the idea that the little one hadn’t needed to construct a persona yet. It was just raw clay. The larger creature had already acquired colour and pattern and identity and all these layers. I don’t necessarily think one is better than the other. It’s more about what happens to us as we move through the world.

Q: What role does imperfection play in your work?

Kylie: A huge one. I don’t want the work to look factory-made. I like wonkiness, fingerprints, asymmetry, uneven teeth. Sometimes I make something too neat and then I have to interfere with it because it stops feeling alive. I want the hand of the maker to stay visible.

Q: Are you ever worried that “weird ceramic creatures” might be dismissed as whimsical or decorative?

Kylie: Probably, but I can’t control that. Humour and play are sometimes treated as though they’re intellectually lightweight, which I don’t agree with. Folklore, mythology, masks, puppets, monsters — humans have always used strange creatures to talk about serious things. The fact that something is funny doesn’t mean it’s empty.

Q: What do monsters allow us to talk about?

Kylie: Everything we don’t quite know what to do with. Difference, shame, desire, fear, transformation, being an outsider. A monster is already outside the rules. It doesn’t have to behave properly. I think that gives it enormous freedom.

Q: Do you identify with the creatures?

Kylie: Sometimes. Not in a literal “this is me” way. But I think every object probably contains something of the person who made it. Even when you’re trying not to put yourself in there.

Q: What do you hope someone feels when they encounter one?

Kylie: Curiosity first. I’d love them to have that moment of “What on earth is that?” And then maybe amusement, affection, discomfort or recognition. I don’t need everybody to arrive at the same interpretation. In fact I’d rather they didn’t.

Q: What would be the worst response to your work?

Kylie: “Oh, that’s cute.”

Although some of them are very cute, which is inconvenient.

Q: And the best response?

Kylie: When someone becomes oddly attached to one. They keep coming back to it. They don’t necessarily know why. That interests me much more than someone saying they like the glaze.

Q: Do you think of the sculptures as art objects or characters?

Kylie: Both, probably. They’re sculptures, but they become characters very quickly. That’s why I like giving them names and little fragments of story. I don’t want to explain them completely, though. I want enough story to open a door, not enough to close it.

Q: Your practice seems to involve a lot of not knowing.

Kylie: Yes. I think that might actually be the practice.

Not knowing and continuing anyway.

Q: What are you ultimately trying to make?

Kylie: Things that feel alive. Not realistic. Alive. Something where you can still sense the making, the uncertainty, the ridiculousness and whatever was trying to emerge through it. And ideally something you might want living on your shelf even though you can’t really explain why.

They are not always especially useful. They are, however, excellent company.