Maria Cooper is a printed textile artist and designer based in County Durham. A graduate of both the Royal College of Art and the Northern School of Art, her practice is deeply rooted in the materiality of textiles, handcrafted processes and the expressive potential of colour. Through stencil screen printing, Cooper translates her original drawings and paintings into dynamic textile compositions. Her visual language, often evocatively nostalgic, draws inspiration from postmodern art and design, 1980s pop culture and mid-century graphic design.

Through her residency, Cooper has developed a collection that explores the human form in motion, capturing the essence of dance. As a performative and ephemeral art form, dance exists in the moment, leaving behind only traces—memories, photographic documentation and recordings. Whether experienced socially in clubs and communal spaces or privately within domestic settings, dance is an integral part of everyday life with the power to uplift, energise and move us emotionally.

Through the interplay of line, form, and colour, Cooper distills the movement and expression of dance by elongating and abstracting the dancers’ forms capturing both the elegance and inherent awkwardness of bodily motion. Her work conveys instinctive gestures—expressions of feeling and sound—using colour to evoke the joy of dance and movement.