Lucinda Mudge's second exhibition is on at Knysna Fine Art, and collectors are lining up for her ceramic artworks. Rich and decadent, her vases are like a cacophonic dreamland where mermaids carry pangas and golden dogs devour each other. Entitled Take What You Want, Mudge's latest exhibition is her largest collection to date - a year's worth of work forming a collection of 18 vases and four wall panels.Her vases, ranging in size from 38cm to 57cm, are deeply personal, and each takes weeks to complete. The work undergoes a three-stage firing process: lines are drawn in, etched and scraped around flowers and mystical animals. The exhibition's eponymous piece shows hands tipped with gold fingernails groping through darkness.The larger two panels, one entitled I'm Fine and an untitled piece, are huge, visually rich ceramic ''drawings". The latter, a mermaid and snake allegory, is, says the artist, an offering to celebrate the African mermaid Mami Wati.New to this collection is a reference to French ceramicist Charles Catteau. Inspired by his art deco patterns, Mudge has substituted an African palette - greens, gold and brown - and interspersed a ring of lurid barbed wire, jarring the beauty and ring-fencing a European heritage.''This new collection of work is a satirical study of how we relate to the themes of beauty, wealth and paranoia in a South African context," she says in the foreword to her lumo-yellow catalogue. "Combining a wide variety of local and global references, these vases become a collage of contemporary South African living."Mudge, born just outside Knysna, studied fine art at UCT's Michaelis before moving to London for four years. She returned to South Africa after the birth of her first child. Now, she lives and works in a treehouse in the Keurbooms area. Surrounded by nature and, as she says, totally removed from "artspeak", she works in solitude, producing the subversive and highly collectable ceramic pieces."This is the first time I'm actually calling myself an artist," she says. "I've always had a full-time job and have been doing little things on the side and in the evenings. Trying to fit [artwork] in. Now if someone says, 'what do you do?', I can say I'm an artist. I've always had a bit of a problem with saying that I'm an artist as it's a bit indulgent and I think it shuts people out."Trent Read, her gallerist at Knysna Fine Art, thinks she's an extraordinary artist. "Her work is amazing," he says. "And it's been chosen as part of the Making Africa exhibition in Bilbao, Spain. Every artist dreams of showing in Bilbao."Indeed, Mudge was approached by the curators of Making Africa. Two of her vases have been selected to be a part of the epic Vitra exhibition.Following its premiere at the Vitra Design Museum in Germany, the exhibition will be presented at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao later this year."Sometimes when I am feeling frustrated, I think to myself: Guggenheim. That makes me feel a lot better," says the artist.The exhibition is on at Knysna Fine Art until the end of the month, finearts.co.za..