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Sculptree tweets...
- Thank you to everyone who came to #Sculptree we hope you enjoyed it! Your kind donations will support tree projects in Africa's dry-lands 2010-09-01
- See you at the #Sculptree #auction at 3pm on bank holiday Monday http://www.sculptree.org/home/final-sculpting-day-sunday-29th-august/ 2010-08-29
- They're done! See the stunning finished #sculptures here: http://www.sculptree.org/home/final-sculpting-day-sunday-29th-august/ 2010-08-29
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Ant Beetlestone
About Ant
My love of freedom, nature and peace means I describe myself as an anarchist, environmentalist and pacifist. I make sculpture to remind myself of my beliefs; not as a retreat from the world, but as a way of demonstrating a value set to a world that seems to prefer gimmicks to archetypes.
Ant Beetlestone
Trained at the Frink School of Sculpture, I studied modelling from life as well as carving stone and wood, under the master carver Harry Everington. Influenced by the school’s teaching of formalism, expression and truth to materials, I came under the influence of the early Greeks and the modern sculptors of the ‘fifties. I still look to them for inspiration, but have also found a love of medieval art, with its uncanny blend of the spiritual and the everyday. This is the quality that I strive for in my work, irrespective of the scale or material.
In choosing subjects to work with, an artist needs to find things they feel strongly about. Carving wood, especially with a chainsaw, requires clear thinking, but it is really an extension of drawing. A chainsaw, to me, is only an eighteen inch long stick of charcoal, used for drawing in three dimensions.
A near death experience reminds one of how fragile life is. With this in mind, I am currently working on a series of highly expressive wood-carvings for an exhibition at Gloucester Cathedral. Called ‘new icons for our time’, they are carvings based on medieval icons, but carved with chainsaws with a degree of freedom that ties them to the Romanesque.
Before going to art school, I initially learnt stone carving working for a firm of stonemasons, restoring churches and manor houses. I went on to teach sculpture and stone carving at the Art Academy in London, leaving in 2005 when my wife had our first child. I now live in Stroud where I have my studio, producing carvings and bronzes for commissions, galleries and myself.
Ant Beetlestone making a big horse
Contact Ant
http://www.antbeetlestone.com
Tel. 01453 768506
mail@antbeetlestone.com
Ant’s 2010 Sculpture: St. Christopher
St. Christopher, patron saint of travellers, carries the Christ child over the torrid waters. He is a giant with a fearsome face, and yet the child trusts him. A powerful symbol for troubled times.
Ant’s 2010 Sculpture design.