Maria O’Sullivan creates exquisite imaginings of the restless world we inhabit using many layers of mixed media.
Born in Cork, Ireland in 1990, Maria graduated with an Honours degree in Fine Art from Crawford College of Art and Design in June 2014.
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From the Degree Show she was selected to exhibit in Joan Clancy Gallery where she received special mention by Irish Times Art Critic Aidan Dunne, and Peter Murray of the Irish Examiner. She was also invited to participate in the Annual Fledglings Exhibition in the Lavit Gallery Cork and in the Emerging Artist Exhibition in St. Patrick’s Hospital Dublin.
Shortly after graduating Maria was awarded a three-month residency with Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice. During which time her "Urban Series" was exhibited at the Agora Gallery, in New York's most notorious art district, Chelsea.
Her work has since been collected both Nationally and Internationally. It also forms part of the CIT Civic Collection.
"My goal is not to imitate the world but to understand how it operates and to find clarity somewhere between the representational and the abstract."
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Conceptually the work is part-social and part-climatic - exploring the complex interactions between the structural and the social. Often using architecture as a departure point, O' Sullivan uses structures to provide a certain social context which allows her to compress time and place. She starts her process by making marks, and uses those marks to create a space. Each composition - sometimes collage, acrylic paint, digital, charcoal and ink - shows structures and scenes shifted into something new.
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The work is contrived from a reservoir of accumulated experiences, it is a record of a lapse in time and place that challenges the uncertainty of the human condition while addressing the intersection of past and future existence. Maria is continuously exploring the relationships between built environments and the people and systems that inhabit them in her work, often dealing with the ambiguity of what has been and what is to come.
A native of Ireland, O’ Sullivan emphasizes uncertainty and indecision on her work, manifesting the many paths life can take. Her work capitalizes on a futurist sensibility and system of complex patterns to create dense reflections of urban space.
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"My work is a complete reflection of my own personality, where each line is a record of my own state of mind, indecision, progression and intersecting thoughts. As I navigate through my work my mindset often shifts and thus so does my drawing: It is in a constant state of change."
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