About

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Marie-Thérèse Ross MRSS is a member of The Royal Society of Sculptors. She has recently been awarded the Eilean Shona Residency, West Coast of Scotland. She was selected by Vanessa Branson, Laura Ford and Mhairi Vari.

 

The residency on the beautiful island of Eilean Shona is a unique opportunity for me to deepen my relationship with wood, my favoured material. I plan to work outside in the natural environment and experiment with new ideas and techniques, working with unprepared wood, carving, and cutting without a plan allowing the environment to feed more directly into my work.

 

She is an Art Gemini Prize winner (2021), and her work was recently featured in Flux Review issue 7.

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Marie-Thérèse Ross explores the hidden workings of the mind, focussing on states of physical, emotional & psychological transformation. Her work appears humorous as well as darkly subversive, as she seems to hide herself in plain sight. She seeks to both reveal and hide difficult childhood memories, episodes that reflect on her own sense of vulnerability and mortality. She makes anthropomorphic furniture as well as mythological creatures & birds, at times incorporated into atmospheric installations with accompanying music creating immersive environments. Her work might hang on the wall, lean, or sit between wall and floor, or move completely into the physical space of the viewer. Sculptures are fragmented to capture the sensation of movement, including flight, as well as the drawn line. Imagery is used as a container for our consciousness, and the vehicle in her exploration of themes.

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During the first lockdown Ross started working in a more unplanned and spontaneous manner, she stopped using preparatory drawings. Often, she had no idea if she was creating something new or just simply involved in a sort of therapy. Each new shape dictated the next rather like a strange and uncontrollable puzzle. The resulting works were more cumbersome, resembling crude biplanes and machinery. This process has continued.

 

Her sculptures are made of a combination of laminated wood parts, found objects and up-cycled wood, which is carved away and painted, adding an extra layer of expression and meaning to the whole. Found objects are integrated and sublimated into the works. The mass of wood echoes the drawn and cut-out lines found in her drawings and collages, lending itself well to her process of working.  Dowels join and secure pieces together, often left exposed rather than smoothed away and hidden. Surfaces are not polished, the grain of the wood is left visible, and the process of making revealed.

 

Marie-Thérèse Ross was awarded a First Class BA hons in painting from Loughborough College of Art and Design, she went onto to study sculpture in Germany for a year at Karlsruhe Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste with the British sculptor Michael Sandle RA. She studied sculpture for her MA at the University of Pennsylvania in the USA. 

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She participates in group shows in various galleries including The Royal Cambrian Academy of Art,  Zabludowicz Collection, OVADA Gallery Oxford,  Arthouse1, in 2019 she was selected by Sacha Craddock for the Creekside Open.

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Her work is in private collections in the USA, Germany, France, and the UK. Marie-Thérèse has worked for many years as a museum educator both in New York and in London including the National Gallery and the Wallace Collection.  Working in museums such as these has left a mark on her work and she often use compositions and themes found in the works of the great masters of European painting. 

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