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Mary Bourne is a sculptor based in the rural North East of Scotland. She trained at Edinburgh College of Art where she received both a BA (hons) and Postgraduate degree in sculpture, before teaching at Edinburgh College of Art and Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen.
The majority of Bourne’s work is carved from natural stone or polished slate. Her work is about man’s relationship with the environment and the idea of the passage of time is recurrent in her work. Medium is, arguably, the most vital element. She treats the material in different ways depending on what she is trying to convey. Human intervention, influenced by, and altering, natural processes. She explains that each technique helps her to find subtle physical forms for her poetic ideas.
Mary Bourne has been recognised with several prizes and awards including the Highland Visual Artist Award 2017, Hope Scott Trust Award 2016 and the Royal Scottish Academy: Highland Society of London Award 2013. She has received numerous public commissions, serves on various arts organisation committees and boards, and in 2012 was elected to the Royal Scottish Academy. In 1999 Mary received a commission to produce public work at the Scottish Poetry Library at Riddle’s Court. She created the Carpet of Leaves – oak leaves in the flagstones surrounding a lectern in the Library’s open-air performance space. In Inverness Bourne was commissioned to make sculptural seating, and inlay pavement flags and the flood wall with lines of Ken Cockburn poems. She has also been commissioned to produce unique works in Banff, Cumbria, Livingston and Dundee.
Public collections include: Aberdeenshire Council, Highland Council, East Lothian Council, North Ayrshire Council, North Lanarkshire Council, Moray Council, Perth and Kinross Council, Barrow Borough Council, West Lothian Council, The Norton Priory Museum in Cheshire, City of Sunderland, Nanao City Japan, Victoria Hospice in Kirkaldy, Mugdock Country Park, Riddles Court, Edinburgh Moray Council, Macmillan Cancer Care, Stobhill Hospital Wards Art Collection.
Mary’s work featured in Impressions In Stone in February 2022 and A Natural Selection in May 2019
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