"Seasonal Cycles"
Polly Cook

UNIVERSITY GENERAL SCULPTURE COLLECTION

Polly Cook is inspired by the theme of love, and it is at the heart of all her artwork, along with the accompanying emotions of longing, hope, loneliness, desire, joy and regret. Her work is not to be taken as literal stories, but rather, they are emotional narratives, visual poetry. They are meant to be experienced as well as seen. Her love of the Romantic Poets such as Byron and Keats and the Pre-Raphaelite artists took her to England when she was 16. There she was also introduced to the German Realists of the 20?s, and these two different art movements influenced her. She studied art there in England, California, and in Portland, Maine, and received a BFA in ceramics and sculpture at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.