mary cooke sculptor

 My artistic interests, goals and ambitions are to question and examine the transitional periods and flux in the feminine experience of change, bringing some insight into this transformation through the personal exploration of the universal female condition.

The laying open the taboos of barrenness, sexuality and the transient stages of womankind and the relationship of the feminine ideal. The exploration of these ideas of fleetness’s, of human condition embodies this flux in the aging process, the cycle of birth and rebirth and in the experience of loss.

My choice of material, and the way I uses them, are critical to the exploration in my art. I tend to choose materials already loaded with meaning.  The craft tradition infuses the material with the requisite amount of closeness, quiet and care. It speaks because it engages with contemporary life in intriguing ways, created from an Irish perspective. I deliberately transform ordinary everyday objects to address a range of contemporary issues such as the feminine, the feminine ideal, and subjugation.

My process is very organic, the process, the repetition, the thoughts, the experience of making, building, the narrative layer upon layer, one word at a time.