With over 30 years experience working as an artist, mainly in puppet animation and model making, I am now concentrating on sculpting portrait heads of humans and animals in clay. I just love the forgiving nature of clay and also its ability to hold very fine detail when necessary.
My art unravels portraits, captured and recreated with a porosity and fragility. The resulting works can be unsettling, haunting, beautiful but always subtly peppered with personality.
Drawing inspiration from my own life, darker themes often seem to embody my sculpture. Maybe it’s a form of catharsis, although humour often emanates as well.
I gravitate towards theatricality and experimentation, often provoking naked bold compositions.
I was delighted to take part in the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition 2019, with my sculpture ‘Cheeky Chester’.
Bev Knowlden
Interview
Listen here to an interview with David FitzGerald, on BBC Radio Devon.
I was invited along to chat about my work, including this sculpture of a deer hound and the techniques I used to create it.
Really powerful, amazing work. I love how the detailed realism of your initial stages is taken over by the process of decay etc!
We have two pieces of Bev’s work, both statement pieces, grabbing attention and light. Bev’s work always plays best to centre stage – pithy pieces. Bold art-couture.
It was so good to see ‘Cheeky Chester’ at the RA last Friday. My friends were really impressed and loved your work. None of us have ever ‘known’ an artist exhibit there before.