This body of work emerged from an increasing interest in craft and design, which has always been latent in my painting and particularly my sculpture. The sculptural works began to suggest utilitarian forms such as cabinets and shelves; it was only a small step to pursue this on its own terms.
The series is guided more by style and aesthetics than utility and consists of several improvised pieces – not drawn or planned - which share the same side profile. As a body of work, these objects serve as a series of prototypes, or variations on a theme, however, each individual artefact is finished as a stand-alone piece of furniture. The forms are derived substantially from brutalist architecture whilst the method of production follows the tradition of one-off studio furniture.
All the pieces are handmade in a small workshop using European oak and the construction is limited to mortice and tenon, mitre and butt joints, which are fundamental and direct means of joining two planes.
photographs by David R Watson
H108cm W150cm D25cm European Oak
£1,800
H45cm L51cm W35cm European Oak
£1,000
H47cm W117cm D19.5cm European Oak
£1,150
W53.5cm D19.5cm H-51cm European Oak
£950
H69.5cm W18cm D19.5cm European Oak
£850
H69.5cm W18cm D19.5cm European Oak
£850
H33cm W18cm D20cm European Oak
£450
H49.5cm W18cm D19cm European Oak
£600
H53cm W34cm D20cm European Oak
£600
H64.5cm W39cm D15.5cm European Oak
£750
H54cm W23.5cm D15.5 European Oak
£600
These sculptural pieces occupy a place within my output that bridges the gap between the paintings, such as the OSB series, and my furniture. Whilst they are resolutely autonomous objects, they draw their form from the language of architecture and design. Further to this, the scale is implicitly domestic, with planes that sit at the level of tabletops and chairs for example. The heavily worked surface, whilst deriving from my paintings, in this instance refers to the complex patterns found in decorative inlays and intarsia woodwork and dematerialises the emphatically blunt, interlocking modernist forms.