Maria Peñil Cabo

Born in Santander, Spain, Maria Peñil Cobo is a mixed media artist currently residing in Beverly, Massachusetts. As a child, she explored San Vicente de la Barquera, a small fishing village on the northern coast of Spain. The land is rich with a natural reserve, rivers leading to beaches spread along the Atlantic Ocean, and snow-capped mountains, all within a 5-mile radius. Becoming a focal point for her art, these diverse landscapes inspired Cobo, and in 2001, she moved to Madrid in pursuit of studying the fine arts.

Throughout her time in Madrid, Cobo was teaching, as well as exhibiting her work at galleries, such as Cultural Center Isabel de Farmesio, La Parra Museum, Siboney Gallery, and Cultural Center Galileo. By encompassing sculpture engraving and photo, Cobo’s work has retained a relationship to organic themes through shape, texture, and nature. This eventually led her to pursue describing the correlation between nature and human nature through art, morphing to her interest in human biology, shapes, ramifications, connections in the organs, the brain, the nervous system, and cells.

After moving to the United States in 2010, Cobo has been activiely involved in the Boston arts community. Her work has been featured at the Boston Green Arts Festival, Salem and Beverly Arts Festivals, the Cox gallery, and many other well-known area festivals and galleries.

Cobo demonstrates CTRL by the focus of nature within her art. Her work looks at metamorphosis, evolution, and latency. She looks at how nature is shaped and filters that interpretation into an abstract element, using solid, natural mediums such as hemp, bees wax, wood, branches, thread, fabrics, and seeds to display her thoughts and interpretation of the world.

- Jordan Raso

An example of Cobo's work. Photo from mariapenilcobo.com.