It’s been 47 years since Suzie Lowe left Malawi, but the country is still working its magic over her.

Ms Lowe is a mixed media artist who makes African-inspired masks, as well as chunky bracelets, earrings and ceramic fish.

“My masks are African influenced,” she said. “I love texture and earth tones.”

Ms Lowe, 61, was born in England to a Bermudian father, Bobby Lowe. The family moved to Malawi when she was a baby so her father could work in the Colonial Office helping the country prepare for independence. Three years after Malawian independence, when Ms Lowe was 14, the family moved to Bermuda. Since then, the Lowes have been well-known for running the Salt Kettle House guest house in Paget.

Living in a different environment as a child gave Ms Lowe a special appreciation for Bermuda’s beauty, although that didn’t come right away.

“I hated Bermuda when we first moved here,” she said. “I was so used to the open spaces of Malawi. Now I feel differently. Not a day goes by that I’m not awestruck by Bermuda’s beauty. I often wonder what the tourists think, if I’m impressed by it and I live here.”

Ms Lowe is based at Bermuda Clayworks in Dockyard. She said the energy there is fabulous.

Her masks are clay, but some of them are glazed so that they appear to be metal. Unfortunately, a lot of visitors to the store don’t appreciate the amount of work that goes into making a single piece, she said. Sometimes visitors can be heard grumbling over the price of an item.

“To make a mask, I have to bring in clay and glazes,” she said. “I make the piece and wait until it dries. I sand it. Then it is fired. I glaze it three times. I fire it again. It is a long process, but I love doing it. It is very therapeutic.”

Sometimes she lets her pieces shape themselves.

“In the past I have done ears on the mask, and as I went to move the mask, one of the ears dropped off,” she said. “So I decided the mask wasn’t meant to have two ears. I sanded it down and fired it that way. Some things work and some things don’t.”

She said there is a lot of talent on the Island but many artists struggle between making a product that will sell, and making the art they want to make.

“I can compare it to a musician singing in a pub,” she said. “He might want to sing his own songs, but the crowd wants to hear American Pie.”

Jewellery is another one of her creative passions. She is largely self-taught although she took a course in jewellery-making at San Miguel de Allende in Mexico.

“I was looking at a picture of myself at 18, the other day, and I was wearing wire earrings I’d made myself,” she said. “I’ve always made jewellery. I don’t deal with anything like precious stones; I only use semi-precious stones. I bring in the components for the earrings and put them together. I particularly like copper wire.”

She has a line of friendship bracelets with quirky sayings on them like: A friend will help you move, a best friend will help you move a body.

This month she is the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institutes’s first artist in residence, along with Kathleen Emerson. The residency means her jewellery will be available for purchase in the gift shop for the month of November.

Her work can also be found at the Bermuda Clayworks in Dockyard, Dockyard Arts Centre, Outriggers in Dockyard, Demco Florist, the Bermuda Society of Arts (BSOA) and the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital gift shop.