Mary Cozens-Walker
Mary Cozens-Walker | |
|---|---|
| Born | Mary Louise Cozens-Walker 11 August 1938 Harrow, England |
| Died | July 4, 2020 (aged 81) Cambridgeshire, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Other names | Mary Green |
| Occupation | Artist |
| Years active | 1959–2018 |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 2 |
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Mary Cozens-Walker (married name Mary Green, 11 August 1938 – 4 July 2020) was an English textile artist and painter best known for her 3-dimensional works pertaining to her own middle-class domestic life. She had exhibitions in the UK, Japan, and the United States.
Biography
Mary Cozens-Walker was born on 11 August 1938 in Harrow, Middlesex, and educated at North London Collegiate School, London (where she was taught by Peggy Angus) and the Slade School of Art (where her contemporaries included Mario Dubsky, Dorothy Mead and Dennis Creffield and future RAs Ben Levene, Patrick Procktor and Anthony Green). Her tutors at the Slade included Cecil Beaton, Lucien Freud, Sam Carter, L.S. Lowry and David Bomberg.
In 1961 she married Anthony Green, with whom she had two daughters, Kate and Lucy. In 1967 she traveled to America when Green received a Harkness Fellowship and spent two years living in Leonia, New Jersey and Altadena, California.
In the 1960s and 1970s Cozens-Walker continued to paint, but found it more and more constrictive. She had begun to experiment with stitching in America, and embroidery via individual projects, and this led to her seeking professional advice from the Royal School of Needlework. This finally led to Cozens-Walker returning to education in 1981 to complete a postgraduate Diploma in Embroidery and Textiles at Goldsmiths.
It was as an artist combining both paint and textiles that Cozens-Walker made her name, and led to solo exhibitions in the UK, Japan and North America.
In addition to being an artist in her own right, Cozens-Walker also acted as muse to Green, with their relationship portrayed in many of his pictures from the 1960s to the 2020s. They appeared together in programmes such as The South Bank Show and Arena.
Public collections
- Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo
- Arts Council of Great Britain
Exhibitions
- Young Contemporaries: Painting 'Women at their toilet' (reproduced in The Daily Telegraph by Terence Mulally).
- Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 1982.
- Ginza Art Space, Tokyo, Japan: Objects of Obsession solo exhibition 1992.
- Staempfli Gallery, NYC, US, 1992.
- Fishguard Music Festival: Artist in residence 1993.
- Bankfield Museum: 'From Painted Textures to Stitched Objects' 2001.
- Boundary Gallery, London, 2001.
- Fiberart Gallery, solo exhibition 2004.
- Boundary Gallery 'Painting with Thread' exhibition, 2007.
A List of Works
- Women at their toilet Oil on board (1959)
- The Cottage Calico, cotton, acrylic paint, ... (1980/1982)
Books
- 'Objects of Obsession 1955-2011'