• Muriel originally trained as a painter at the Beaux-Arts in Paris
• She came to ceramics later in life and describes herself as a ‘ceramic enthusiast’
• Her floral Ophélia was her first ceramic persona

Muriel Persil took up ceramics in the mid-2010s, marking a pivotal period in her career as a painter. Her world is enchanting, delicate, offbeat, even phantasmagorical. From her expansive imagination and detailed hand-building come vibrant sandstone sculptures, organic and polymorphous, half-plant and half-animal, an aquatic underground world brimming with corals, shells and crustaceans, female heads resembling jellyfish, vases-bouquets. Muriel's work breathes mystical symbolism, influenced by romanticism. "My works explore themes of beauty, death, metamorphosis and the ephemeral," she explains. A seasoned exhibitor, Muriel now creates large installations, measuring up to 2 metres. Her Abracadabra piece in 2024 comprised of more than a hundred ceramic plates, and required four months of intensive work to produce.