Maria Simonds-Gooding
Maria Simonds-Gooding was born in India in 1939 and moved to Ireland with her family at the age of eight. Her early interest in art practice led to her an education at the National College of Art and Design, and later Le Centre de Peinture in Brussels and the Bath Academy of Art in Corsham from 1962 – 1968. She has lived and worked in Kerry since 1947.
Maria was elected a member of Aosdána in 1981 and was elected full membership of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 2012. In 1985 the artist mounted a substantial exhibition at the Crawford Municipal Gallery, Cork where she presented work from 1965-1985. Following this show Simonds-Gooding returned to using oil applied thinly and directly to paper using vibrant colours to describe the bog landscape which had become a central theme at this point in her career. These works, executed over a two year period from 1985-1987, culminated in exhibitions in London at the Solomon Gallery (1986) and the Taylor Galleries, Dublin, 1987.
As well as exhibiting in Ireland, she received international acclaim when she exhibited at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York in 1979, and again in 1982. Continuing to exhibit both at home and abroad, she was elected a member of Aosdána in 1981. In 2002 she received a commission from the Four Seasons Hotel in Dublin, for which she created a number of tapestries. A retrospective of her work was held at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 2014.
Inspired by the physicality of the Irish coastal landscape, Simonds-Gooding’s practice considers the struggle between the individual and the environment. Exhibited extensively since the 1970s, her work is held in public collections including the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.