Marni Spencer-Devlin was born in post-war Germany. Life was about survival. Art was frivolity at best, at worst a cruel reminder of a bygone past. Her parents, too shell-shocked to function, were bewildered by a child who was completely obsessed with making art from the time she was old enough to hold a pencil.
Marni's early creative efforts were tossed into the trash, but her need to create was irrepressible. She painted the walls in her room and even sculpted her windowsill and was severely punished for it. When she was eight Marni became interested in portraiture. Despite her obvious talent, her fervent requests for a formal education in art were ridiculed and derided or simply ignored. Thus footloose, Marni spent many turbulent years trying to find her place in the world, her creativity obliterated by the struggle to survive.
A chance employment opportunity resulted in a successful twenty-year career in marketing. Marni opened her own firm which had grown to seventy employees when she became seriously ill and unable to work. While recovering she returned to the exploration of the beauty of the human face. Over time her portraits became larger than life. When she grew bored with paper she began rendering her subjects on plaster made to look like stone. The work gained popularity and attracted serious collectors.
Exclusively focused on art Marni began to evolve as an artist. She came to feel constricted by portraiture but remained fascinated with the possibilities of plaster. With her discovery of the technique of 'Painting With Plaster' she evolved towards contemporary abstract art . In her first series entitled 'Joy Babies' she simply allowed textures and colors to express themselves in a light-hearted, decorative manner.
Her current series, entitled 'Uquobo' is the culmination of her artistic development thus far. Uquobo is the Zulu word for 'essence'. Marni has come to believe that art is a gift from the Universe expressing itself through the artist. Her process in creating Uquobo is to enter a place of absolute 'no-mind', a meditative state in which she becomes a conduit for the textures and colors to express themselves without her interference. She does not analyze nor interpret the impulses. Still the work is often deeply personal to her. For Uquobo 'rust' she was led to use a piece of her actual wedding veil and Uquobo 'aqua II' even contains pieces of her wedding dress.
Each piece is simply entitled Uquobo and identified only by its color palette so as to not imply a meaning and enable the viewer to establish his own 'soul dialog'. Uquobo evokes an emotional response and lends a palpable presence to its space. " I want collectors to feel a stirring within and know that they want more of it. "