2015 Maria O'Toole
Sunday, 26 April 2015
Maria O’Toole, engaged with our Art students with a wealth of experience. Bringing to the residency experience as an art educator, designer and illustrator, as well as finalist in the Parkin Award (National NZ Drawing Award) in 2013 and 2014, finalist in the 2014 Wellington Regional Drawing Award and resident artist in the DRAWInternational Artist in Residency in Caylus, France. Maria worked alongside students while she develop a series of works for exhibition.

Maria was interested in how intimate spaces are experienced and explored ways this could be recorded in large-scale performative drawings. Maria shares her art practice during the residence and says, “My interest in the body in space stems from my illustration practice. A figurative drawing is always my starting point or way into a new body of work. In my drawings I navigate the in-between space that I experience when taking a walk, when the rhythm of my body and imagining consciousness slips into another space where daydreams open up and expand a vast inner landscape.”