Biography
Mary Bourne RSA FRSS is an artist based in the rural North East of Scotland. Trained at Edinburgh College of Art, her professional experience has included numerous commissions for public places, including The Scottish Poetry Library, River Connections in Inverness and interpretative artworks at Bennachie, Aberdeenshire and Mallerstang, East Cumbria. She has worked on a number of new school buildings to create integrated artworks, and has developed an interest in the potential of art as a medium for exploring subjects within the school curriculum on a deeper, more philosophical level. Exhibiting regularly, Mary has received a number of prizes and awards (including Royal Scottish Academy: The Highland Society of London Award, Meyer Oppenheim Prize and Ireland Alloys Award; Royal Glasgow Institute: Milly and Benno Schotz Award; Society of Scottish Artists: Art for a Better World Award). She has served on various arts organisations’ committees and boards, including The Scottish Arts Council Visual Arts Committee (1995-2000), a period as Chair of the Scottish Sculpture Workshop (2002-5), Chair of engaged practice arts organisation, Deveron Projects (2012-17) and currently she is Chair of The Royal Scottish Academy General Purposes Committee and a member of its Council. She has participated in symposia in the US and Japan and in 2015 she was the RSS Brian Mercer Artist in Residence at Pietrasanta in Tuscany. Recent projects have focused on the area around her home, and have investigated the role art can play in interrogating and communicating the issues that face rural communities at a time of accelerating change.
She says: "My work, predominantly in carved natural stone, reflects on our relationship with the environment and often deals with subjective reaction, the passage of time and change. The intrinsic qualities of the stone chosen are integral to the work, which is often underpinned by an awareness of geological timescales - a sense that there is a bigger picture than this constantly vanishing present. The physicality of the objects I make is very important and they are often highly tactile; stone warmed and shaped by my hands will perhaps be warmed again by another’s hands in some unknowable time to come."