Maria O’Toole
Artist/Researcher/Educator/Writing
Maria O’Toole is a visual Artist/Researcher based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington), Aotearoa (New Zealand).
Exhibition
Liminality
Twentysix Gallery
11th – 20th October 2024
First Kowhai, Acrylic, Oil Stick on Board, 420 x 630mm, 2024
(far Left) You breathe out, I breathe in, 1., 2024
Acrylic, Oil Stick, Oil Pastel on Canvas, 1220 x 1220mm
Maria creates embodied drawing processes in response to her own particular environmental concerns. Her method begins with walking. The experience of her sensing body and the ecology she is studying intertwine as she investigates an intuitive space between perceiver and perceived.
Awards
National Contemporary Art Award Finalist 2023
Poems to Oceania: Vanuatu April 2023
Crayon on Fabriano paper
Judge: Melanie Oliver, Curator, Christchurch City Gallery
Poems to Oceania: Vanuatu, April 2023 were drawn in the open-air on the island of Santo in Vanuatu. I was attempting to build visual poems from the rhythms of the ocean lapping around this sea of islands.
Waikato Art Museum, Kirikiriroa, Hamilton. 29th July – 12 November 2023
My Concerns around the detrimental human impact on moana/ocean and awa/rivers led me to the development of these embodied drawing processes.
These processes take place in a liminal space between human and non-human. They are sensory, imaginative and speculative.
PhD Research
Drawn Chorus
Maria’s PhD drawing research (Drawn Chorus) is an embodied speculation on how “sound” is experienced as pressure from a whale’s perspective. At the heart of this methodological drawing study is her investigation of an intuitive space between perceiver and perceived, in which she listens, imagines and speculates on a whale’s experience of human-generated sound as it interferes with the natural sound environment of oceanic space. Sound is essential to these marine mammals; it is a primary means of communication. Noise travels through the sea as pressure, and it travels further in the sea than in the air. Through the development of drawing research processes that tune into bodily, sensory and gestural responses to ocean acoustics, a visual language for the unseen sound forces experienced by whales evolved. Relational encounters with science and nature played a role in this production of knowledge.
Drawing School + Open-air Drawing Workshops
- Raetihi Retreat, Ruapehu, Central Plateau (Small groups)
- The Whare-Whiorau Studio, Eastbourne Bays, Wellington (One to one tuition)
Archive
How Loud Is Too Loud? No. 7
1700h x 1450w mm, willow charcoal and oil paint on Fabriano paper, 2020
How Loud Is Too Loud? No. 4
2020, Conte chalk and water on on black primer on canvas
Project
Consonance Research
Upstream Art Trail, Central Park, Brooklyn, Wellington. 2016/17.
Park visitors were asked questions around predator free legislation. From their answers a sound work was created and exhibited in the park. Two drawn scores were entered into the Parkin Drawing Prize and were selected as finalists.
Image: M. OToole, Slowbirds 1, Mixed Media, 2017, Finalist-Parkin Drawing Prize 2017.
Archive
Depth
M. OToole
2013, Charcoal on Fabriano. 1450w x 1900h
Archive
(Detail) Parkin Prize Finalist 2014
M. OToole
Mixed media
Judges Comment: A drawing is a tremor on the surface of all that matters. Gregory O’Brien
Maria O’Toole, PhD. Fine Arts, Independent Artist/Researcher
Artist Maria O’Toole is based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington), Aotearoa (New Zealand).
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