Inspired by the landscapes, animals and birds that surround his home in the Blue Mountains’ town of Leura, Cooley’s latest majolica ceramics explore the terrain between abstraction and realism, object and painting - and, not least, between the tactile and the ethereal. Australian parrots and marsupials - motifs that are familiar in Cooley’s practice - are now rendered in the vivid colour and glazes that the majolica technique facilitates their surfaces rich in texture, their forms hovering between the familiar and the foreign.
Read MoreHaving first found acclaim as a painter, in recent years Cooley has sought to blur the boundaries between painting and sculpture by articulating the beauty, vibrancy and physicality of the landscape through his painterly and textural ceramics. Cooley’s organic approach to his subject matter reveals subtle suggestions of narratives as well as past and present influences.
Cooley was recently awarded the Gold Coast 2010 International Ceramic Art Prize. He is represented in most state and regional art galleries and was honoured with a survey exhibition at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery 2009.
Text courtesy Martin Browne Contemporary.
