Manipulating color excites me. Paint contained by geometric and overlapping shapes conceals and reveals juxtapositions of color that express new possibilities. Transparent, translucent, and opaque colors combine to create surprises. Surfaces present layers of drifting color, bright accents and subtle texture.
The work, though Western in color use, has a spare Eastern aesthetic. Manipulating clay excites me. To bring the clay figure into being - the gesture, the line, the subtle musculature, the shifting contours combining to make a singular expression of a unique human being that becomes a bronze - seems the ultimate act of creation. This artist's life couldn't be any better!
A detailed drawing of a postman and mailbox set 2nd-grader Marianne Cooper on a life-long art path. With painting and drawing her strong suites, she moved confidently forward to become an “artist”. The practicality of her 1950’s upbringing interfered though, so she “went straight” as a young adult, choosing English teaching, marriage, raising children, and a conventional life in suburban Houston, as Marianne Hornbuckle.
However, the art drive was strong … in her early thirties, stifled and frustrated, she picked up a watercolor brush and soon the dream returned. Sales of watercolors offered needed encouragement, and within five years, she was represented in galleries, winning awards, and interpreting the Southwest landscape as large semi-abstract watercolors.
Beginning a new life in New Mexico in her early forties, she continued to explore her artistic horizons – traditional landscapes, monotypes, tinwork shrines, flower portraits, Painted Ponies. Her attraction to Yoga in her 50’s has led to the current abstract painting of her sixties, and that first love, drawing the figure, has emerged as figurative sculpture cast as bronzes.
