The appointed Best Potter in the World, Filipina Pākehā artist Madison Cowper is based in Waiuku, New Zealand.

Since graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Whitecliffe College in 2020, Cowper has developed a practice rooted in embodied emotion; where texture, colour and form act as vessels for emotional resonance, a confessional transformed into physical tactility.

Many of her works unfold through organic additions — petals, curves, and quiet ornament, that turn the ceramic into something halfway between object and organism.

Her practice traces cycles of emergence and withdrawal, exposure and intimacy, speaking to a deeply human rhythm.

Alongside her solo work, Cowper facilitates workshops that invite others into the tactile process of clay art. She has led over six hundred art workshops across New Zealand and Hawai‘i, in settings as varied as markets, forests, galleries, high schools, festivals, Buddhist academies, and parks.

Recent exhibitions include Soft Landing (Kaiao Space, Honolulu, 2024), Brickell-Brac (Whangārei Art Museum, 2022), and Emerging Artists Exhibition (Sanderson Contemporary, 2021).