Susan Smith’s white stoneware “Sun Yellow Bird in the Thicket Mug” features handcarved details around the handpainted illustration.

Susan Smith’s creative process can be described in one word: intuition. “I create because it’s what I do,” she explains. And she finds continuous inspiration just outside her Oak Ridge, Tenn., studio windows, where she watches the birds and notices the changes in her ever-expanding gardens.

Smith’s ideas find their release on her 4×8-foot canvas-covered worktable where a “big fat pencil” rests, ready for new designs and ongoing lists—usually while she’s in the middle of producing other work. “It’s kind of like my giant notepad,” she laughs.

Smith relies on her gut to determine when a design is ready to jump from the table and onto a mug or vase. “I usually test things directly,” she says. “I don’t know if it will look right until it’s on the three-dimensional form.”

Brightly colored birds, turtles and ladybugs mingle on plates, mugs, bowls, pitchers, vases and tiles. If the collection had a distinct message, it would be “relax, laugh, enjoy and be happy,” Smith says.

Her work wasn’t always this expressive, she explains. Although she graduated from Tennessee Tech University in 1999 with a fine art degree in ceramics, Smith didn’t settle down and build her home studio until 2005. She found initial success with traditional glazes, but was left feeling uninspired.

In January 2007, Smith made a radical change. She started by writing a list of work and artists she admired. “It was a list of colorful work with a lot of imagery,” she says. Ready to pursue a new style, she bought a box of stoneware and bright stains and began producing botanical-themed pieces. When her now-signature bird appeared, Smith knew she was on the right track. By 2008, she had refined the process and built a “natural collection of work.”

Smith says her future work is a day-to-day evolution. “If I am not making something, I feel lost,” she says. “Either I am in the studio creating, in the kitchen cooking or in the garden growing.”

For more on the artist and her work, visit www.susansmithclay.com.