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Mary Claire Rooney’s artwork focuses on humanity’s search for satisfaction and the pull between a person’s desires and fears. Her latest series of drawings is based around the idea of a girl going on a late night snack run who runs into a series of strange events that prevent her from accomplishing her goal. The girl’s search for food is stymied by the unnerving events that she encounters during the “witching hour” of the night, forcing her to go on a hunt which never reaches its conclusion.
The central idea for this body of work came from Rooney’s experiences as a college student. She would often stay up late to finish schoolwork and strives to emulate the unsettling, dream-like world that she experienced around 3:00 am in her works. Rooney’s drawings place more emphasis on the hunt itself rather than the goal at the end of the search. This reflects Rooney’s personal ideas on life: we are always searching for something and it will never truly end.
Rooney has always loved comic books and that style of illustrative, sequential storytelling informs her artwork. Her subject matter is informed by Charles Burns’ grotesquely beautiful illustrations while the dreamy yet sharp style of her work is influenced by Sophia Campbell’s art style. Each piece in her series of drawings tells its own self contained story while also functioning as a moment in a larger narrative structure.
