Outdoor

Ian Turnock›

Church Lawton, United Kingdom

"contemporary sculpture inspired by nature"

My sculpture is inspired by complex patterns and structures in nature. Currently my main sources of inspiration are the silhouettes trees form against the sky at different times of the year. Often it is the empty spaces and gaps I am looking for just as much as the leaves and branches themselves, an aesthetic concept known in Japanese culture as ‘Ma’ which is akin to the silences between the notes in music. The Japanese also have a poetic word for the dappled light trees create: ’Komorebi’.

"A wood is essentially a field of light overgrown by trees. It is not the trees themselves that make a wood,
but the shape and disposition of the remaining light, of the sky that descends between the trees.”
from The Peregrine or The Hill of Summer by nature writer J.A. Baker

My background in graphic design influences my exploration of form and line. Drawings and photographs are the starting point from which I develop organic, abstract and figurative sculpture. I create intricate drawings from which the final artwork is digitally cut into stainless steel, corten weathering steel, aluminium, copper and plywood, transforming the drawn line into a tangible object.