Ellen van der Woude, a Dutch ceramic artist based in Luxembourg, creates delicate, organic sculptures that reflect her profound connection to nature. A member of the International Academy of Ceramics and the Cercle Artistique de Luxembourg, she regularly exhibits her work internationally. Working with clay without moulds or a potter’s wheel, she infuses her pieces with fluid movement—capturing the illusion of life in stillness, like the marine world: sea urchins, sea sponges, coral—which embodies the delicate balance between vulnerability and resilience. For the 2025 De Mains De Maîtres Biennale, she presents a series of new works—each entirely handmade—becoming fragments of petrified nature, inviting us to reconnect with a world humanity tends to forget, and to reflect on our lost connection with the environment. Van der Woude’s approach—both intuitive and masterful—transforms ceramics into a visual language where dynamic forms tell a story, where the poetry of matter and life is evident, and where beauty is all the more extraordinary because it is fragile—the very essence of the theme Nature singulière.
Biography