British, b. 1958
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One of Britain’s leading contemporary sculptors, Simon Gudgeon has a signature smooth style that marvellously concentrates spirit and nature. His minimalist, semi-abstract forms depict both movement and emotion of a moment captured with a visual harmony that is unmistakably his own.
Born in Yorkshire in 1958, Gudgeon ‘lived deep in the countryside on the family farm, learning the essential arts of observation, evaluation and interpretation of how animals and birds behave, both with each other and man’. After studying law at Reading University, he practised as a solicitor, starting painting only in his thirties and first exhibiting at London’s Battersea Exhibition Centre in 1992. An impulse purchase of artist’s clay at the age of 40 led into his new career as a sculptor, responding to what lay closest to his heart: the natural world.
Since then Gudgeon has attained worldwide recognition, with exhibitions in London, New York, San Diego, Paris and the Netherlands. His works are featured in important private collections abroad and in the United Kingdom, including those of His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh, The Duke of Bedford and The Duke of Northumberland.
Gudgeon’s countryside park, ‘Sculpture by the Lakes’ at Pallington in Dorset, provides a tranquil backdrop for his monumental finished pieces and houses convenient studio workshops. Hinting at how the creative process unfolds for him, he explains, ‘Most sculptures don’t start out as a conscious thought, with all the aspects of form and meaning carefully considered. What happens is that an idea enters my mind – be it a shape, a movement or an emotion – and I simply want to convey it. I must convey it! Ideas come from a combination of observations, thoughts, beliefs and the profound experiences of one’s life.’
Gudgeon sculpts primarily in bronze, marble and granite and occasionally in glass or stainless steel. For the modelling of the form, he uses a number of different materials, depending on the nature and scale of the subject – terracotta clay, oil-based Chavant clay, epoxy resin or foam.
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Working directly from nature and live subjects, he crafts sculptures that share an elemental kinship of identity with all living things. He is particularly known for his sculptures of birds in flight, often with ingeniously engineered bases that seem to launch them into the air rather than anchor them to the ground.
Trips to Africa, Asia and Australasia have enabled Gudgeon to broaden his subject matter and experiment with a variety of styles and methods. His pared-down approach to sculpture embodies the flowing line of the skeleton, turning it into ‘something abstract, taking away more and more information, but ... maintaining the inherent tactile core, so the form is still identifiable’. Using the smallest of details, such as the arching of a neck, he suggests rather than depicts a bird or mammal.
In 2009, Gudgeon’s sculpture Isis was installed in Hyde Park, London, the first such installation there for over 50 years. With the support of Halcyon Gallery and the artist, the Isis project has raised more than £1.75 million for The Royal Parks Foundation to fund a new, environmentally friendly children’s education centre – The Look Out – in the heart of the park.
Gudgeon has been selected as Featured Artist for the 2010 Western Visions exhibition at the National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Other 2010 shows include Birds in Art at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, Wisconsin, and Art and the Animal, the fiftieth anniversary exhibition of the Society of Animal Artists, at the San Diego Natural History Museum, California. A solo exhibition at Halcyon Gallery is in preparation for 2011.
Always challenged and excited by the extremes and dynamics of nature, Gudgeon is relentlessly innovative in the studio, aiming to ‘move away from the purely representational towards something that has a deeper subtext and, as it expresses ... thoughts and emotions, is more satisfying to create’.
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