Robert King (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) is a ceramic artist and physician whose work engages clay as a site of memory, transformation, and formal inquiry. Working extensively with locally sourced materials, King creates vessels that foreground restraint, balance, and depth. His minimalist aesthetic, grounded in deep material knowledge, reflects a conceptual approach that resists categorical definition. Blending abstraction, cultural reference, and philosophical inquiry, his hand-built forms seem to emerge as much from geological time as from human intention.

King’s practice moves through and beyond pottery traditions, positioning clay as collaborator, witness, and teacher. His work explores the layered relationships between body and land, between creation and destruction, and between past and presence. Exhibited and collected widely—including by the American Museum of Ceramic Art, the Denver Art Museum, the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA), the Center for Contemporary Arts (CCA Santa Fe), Phillips Gallery, and the TiA Collection—his pieces are recognized for their quiet strength and contemplative depth.

King is the founder and curator of Duende Gallery in Galisteo, NM, where he lives, works, and remains active as a mentor and educator committed to sustaining intergenerational knowledge and creative autonomy.