Marjan Wouda, Sculptress

Marjan Wouda was born in the North of Holland in 1960 and after she finished secondary school she came to England to study.

She went to Manchester Polytechnic where she took a Visual Arts Foundation course then specialised in sculpture at North East London Polytechnic, gaining a First Class Honours Degree in Fine Art. She also has an M.A. in Fine Art (Sculpture).

She grew up on a Dutch dairy farm where she enjoyed drawing the cows using charcoal. These days most of her work is about her favourite subject, animals, which she casts mainly into bronze from clay originals. The animals are mainly life size with highly tactile surfaces which make you want to feel and touch their bony, curvy forms.

Marjan lives with her husband Immy Deshmukh and her children in the oldest house in Darwen in Lancashire, where she has space in the outbuildings to create her sculptures out of clay, bronze, welded steel, wax and recycled materials.

Marjan’s commissioned sculptures include, a life size knight on a horse for a shopping centre at Ashton-Under-Lyne, a very large mole in a park in Newcastle upon Tyne and for a new town near Preston, a wild boar chased by two hounds.

As well as having exhibited her work in galleries in Amsterdam and London, she has toured the UK, Holland and Ireland with exhibits of her sculptures, some inspired by traditional nursery rhymes from around the world.

She has also worked in a Lancashire park creating animals out of recycled materials and done large scale commissioned bronze sculptures for the publisher Felix Dennis’ Garden of Heroes.

She has developed a fascination for monkeys and, as with all her animal sculptures, she tries to incorporate humour along with the connection of emotions which apply to both humans and animals.

Examples of her work are

This heron commissioned by United Utilities at Entwistle Reservoir, north of Bolton, can look quite different, depending on the water level and weather conditions. This bird is in an appropriate place as there is a nearby heronry.

These two gigantic mating tortoises can be seen on the island Mustique, in the Caribbean, and are about ten times there actual size. They are copies of a small, native born species which have red scales on their legs.

This owl replaced the one lost on the newel post at the Victorian Library in Accrington. He keeps his beady eye on all the visitors, reminding everyone of the nursery rhyme ‘A wise old owl, sat in an oak; the more he heard, the less he spoke’.

A very enlarged sleeping squirrel monkey reminding people of the similarities between primates and ourselves. 


Patrick Johnson 11S1