Former fashion designer Ludmilla Balkis exchanged a high-flying career in Paris and London for a no-frills studio in the Pyrenees. There she uses clay impregnated with foraged local materials to create robust yet ethereal pots

If countryside living is calling you, Ludmilla Balkis’s story might be your coup de grâce. Almost four years ago, the artist turned her back on a frenetic life in Paris and London, where she worked as a fashion designer with Phoebe Philo at Céline. Her grand jeté landed her in the heart of the Pyrenees, where we find her today, hands once expert at negotiating city living now preoccupied at a workbench in an old livestock shed. It was both a geographical leap and an ideological one; this simpler way of living afforded clarity of thought, unbridled creativity and a sense of peace.

Historically, Basque houses like the one Ludmilla now occupies were inhabited by successive generations who lived among their animals; a practical, if smelly, affair. The heat from the cattle in the barn below would rise and warm the living quarters above; crucial in the mountains where temperatures can oscillate between -2°C and the high 30s. Ludmilla works out of one such barn, connected to her own home, where cows were once kept. It looks like they’ve only recently moved out. ‘I kept the trough and the original shelves,’ she says. The abreuvoir, where the animals would drink, is now her tool-cleaning sink. Contemporary additions include oakwood shelves made by a local carpenter, but the very nature of the place is soothing. There’s a sense that the work undertaken in this unpretentious studio warms the rest of the property – spiritually, if not literally – in the same way it always has.

Ludmilla’s bold move was prompted by many things. Among them was a desire to connect more meaningfully with nature and Basque culture. ‘In the city there were too many people and no space,’ Ludmilla says. ‘The mountains have a kind of power – they anchor me. There’s a primitive feeling, similar to what I experience in a church or cathedral built centuries ago. It’s something beyond the human presence – it offers humility.’

Ludmilla is of Armenian heritage, and describes healing from transgenerational trauma caused by the genocide of her people (1915–16) as a ‘lifelong project’. A patch of woodland leads down to the mountains, where the landscape is verdant and refreshing; ‘it rains more than in London,’ Ludmilla says, uncomplainingly. The ecosystem is rich; her area is known for its variety of birds, with bearded vultures ruling the clouds, red kites dancing on the skyline and wallcreepers scuttling up cliffs. Human intervention is sparse – farm dwellings lie low against the ground, formed from the same earth and rocks from which they emerge, like molehills. But other than the odd sheep, it’s just Ludmilla, her clay and the birds.

She walks daily – ‘a kind of meditation’ – gathering stones, clay, sticks; though this year she is drawn especially to ferns, with their filigree fronds. These found materials form the inspiration for her ceramic pots, which are big, organic and challenging to make, each taking at least a week. ‘I approach clay by not dominating the material, but letting it teach me. I try to be invisible.’ The resulting sculptures are ambitious; marked by a conflicting duality – wide, firm bases and petal-thin edges that echo the works of masters like Hans Coper. She experiments with glazes in a meticulously detailed fashion, taking inspiration from Lucie Rie.

Above all, there’s a captivating, raw quality to Ludmilla’s clay forms. ‘Before coming here, I tried to work clay as a way of repairing the inner wounds of my childhood or my past. It was more introverted somehow,’ Ludmilla explains. ‘The land, because it’s so rich, helped me get out of my own self.’ And now, the process of making is freeing rather than burdensome. She describes it as a ‘dance’ between the material and her hands. The mountainside move has not just been good for her work, it seems it has helped shape her soul.