Marieken Cochius
Marieken Cochius is a Dutch-born artist who is drawn to remote places where she studies nature and makes art inspired by it. Her work is multi-media and encompasses drawing, painting, working with materials from the earth and sculpture.
Cochius’s work is elemental, related to or embodying the powers of nature. She is fascinated by growth-forms, root systems of plants, seedpods and animal architecture. In those, she sees a sensitive chaos that contains and propels the origins and energies of life. She aims to evoke the mystery and power of nature through intensely materialist and tactile forms and imagery. Cochius explores the porous boundary between perception and experience. she wants to create a mesmerizing effect of movement, something that looks familiar, but that you cannot exactly place.
Investigating interactive networks between living organisms in an ecosystem led to the creation of “Welded Drawings”. They are wall hung steel sculptures created from a steel sheet. Unlike regular welding where pieces of metal are fused together, Cochius uses an MIG welder mainly as a drawing tool. She melts wire to draw on a steel sheet and build up reliefs. By adjusting the voltage and the wire speed she can control the thicknesses of lines and steel bubbles which grow together into nerve- or root-like systems. She incorporates the molten steel drips and warping of the metal sheet in the work as well as intentionally burning through the metal, creating organic shapes with lace-like openings.
In 2021 Cochius received an NYSCA Decentralization Grant for an Individual Artist Commission. She is a 2020 recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA), Emergency Grants COVID-19 Fund grant. In 2017 Cochius completed a public sculpture commission for the Village of Wappingers Falls, NY made possible by a grant from the Hudson River Foundation. Recent solo shows were at Palmer Gallery, Poughkeepsie, NY, SUNY Ulster, NY. She has participated in residencies including the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT.
Cochius' work has been shown in group exhibitions at the Lockwood Gallery, Kingston, NY, 6th International Drawing Triennial in Tallinn, Estonia; Ely Center, New Haven, CT; Holland Tunnel Gallery, Newburgh, NY and many more. Her work has been featured in Elle Decor, Columbia Journal, the New York Times, and in over 40 art, literary, poetry and university publications. Cochius studied photography at the Art Academy St Joost in Breda, the Netherlands and is
self-taught in drawing, sculpture and painting. She currently lives in the Hudson Valley, New York.
