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Fiona Cuthbert O’Meara
Ceramicist, Interdisciplinary Artist, Educator
Fiona Cuthbert O’Meara is an award winning ceramicist and interdisciplinary artist based on the Sunshine Coast, working on Gubbi Gubbi Country. With a strong foundation in visual arts, she completed a Master of Visual Arts at Queensland College of Art & Design in 2025 and a Diploma of Visual Arts at TAFE East Coast in 2018. Fiona has been the recipient of multiple arts prizes, grants and residencies and mentors emerging artists from her Doonan based studio.
Fiona has studied under some of the Sunshine Coast’s leading ceramicists, including Andrew Bryant, Rowley Drysdale, and Jackie Gasson. In 2019, she was awarded the Geoffrey Walker Fellowship, which enabled her to travel to the Penland School of Craft in North Carolina. There, she studied under acclaimed American sculptor Arthur Gonzalez—an experience that significantly influenced her artistic direction and deepened her engagement with the medium.
Fiona is also the founder of Naturemuse Ceramics, a vibrant studio located in the Sunshine Coast hinterland which features a wide range of firing techniques including Raku and Wood-firing. The studio offers an extensive program of classes and workshops for all skill levels, and has grown to include artist residencies, mentoring programs, and visiting artist workshops featuring national and international practitioners.
With her depth of experience as both a practicing artist and arts educator, Fiona brings a discerning eye, technical expertise, and a strong appreciation for innovation in contemporary ceramics. Her commitment to supporting emerging artists and fostering creative community makes her a valued contributor and mentor in the field of ceramic arts.
Teaching from the philosophy of interest based learning, Fiona encourages and nurtures each of her students to relax and enjoy the creative process. To slow down, take notice and truly enjoy the somatic and deeply tactile experience of working with clay.
Above image by @charmainelyonsphotography
Fiona’s artwork is largely exploratory and organic in nature and inspired by the rhythms found in the natural world, often mimicking textures, colours and processes which emulate deeper underlying human and environmental processes.
Her creative ceramic practice stretches across many ceramic disciplines including wheel throwing, hand building, sculpture, glaze formulation and various atmospheric firing techniques including wood firing in her recently built Anagama kiln on her Doonan property.
Fiona also works with paper, textiles, metals, found object and installation. Her constant fascination with the philosophical nature of impermanence leads to an ongoing evolution of creative practice, often cross-fertilising a range of mediums to create strong narrative and ambiguity. The aims of Fiona’s work is stimulate curiosity, to generate more questions than answers. The work requires the viewers input to render it complete and becomes a catalyst for conversation and deep reflection.
Explored are form and surface inspired by a sentient exploration of material and “matter”. The concepts of imperfection and internal space are main themes in her work and her creative process is constantly changing and evolving. Fiona exhibits regularly in Brisbane and on the Sunshine Coast.
Being awarded the Geoffrey Walker Fellowship for ceramics in 2019, by Suncoast Clayworkers, Fiona travelled to the Penland School of Craft in North Carolina USA to study with renowned figurative artist Arthur Gonzalez.
Known to break tradition and masterfully defy all logic in the ceramic making process, Gonzalez challenges not only the limitations of the materials with which he works but the deeply conditioned human social response. He has exhibited worldwide for over 30 years and is currently the Professor of Arts at California college of arts.
The next part of this journey saw Fiona continuing on to Northern Maine to spend time with artist Tim Christiansen. Through etching onto his wheel thrown forms, he creates relics to record local flora and fauna to forever record this moment in time on his intricately carved vessels. Travelling deep within his process and around the globe, Christiansen studies his environment from an evolutionary and ecological lens, gaining and recording with great insight, historical and social perspective.
Both artists are true story tellers, generously sharing their response to their inner and outer environments. which has forever changed her practice in ceramic and conceptual art.
My hands are, in essence, my voice of expression. With them, I allow myself to feel into each artwork and every aspect of aesthetic life. They are the direct connection between my own experience and the form which I create.
In my creative practice, my focus is directed to the relationship between a sense of impermanence and the notion of internal space. My awareness of the presence of imperfection in all things is heightened, and I find comfort and beauty in this process. It helps me to understand myself and the world that surrounds me, it is a sentient experience, an unfoldment where I become both the artisan and the observer.
Imperfections are the direct evidence of life experience, humility, re-connection and healing. They are the generators of reflection and conversation, as a catalyst for the development of new knowledge and change.
Prerequisites required; Ceramic Glazing 101 & Wheel Throw workshop must be completed.
Commence anytime based on availability, however, there is a waiting list for this class.
When you purchase a ticket, you acknowledge and agree that:
Once you’ve secured your spot, in addition to your tax receipt, you’ll receive an email from Fiona acknowledging your registration.
If you haven’t received the confirmation email within a couple of hours of your purchase, please check your junk mail.
Fiona will be in contact a week before classes start to provide you with instructions and what to bring.