Malcolm Martin and Gaynor Dowling

Martin and Dowling starting working together twelve years ago; originally Malcolm studied Fine Art at the Royal College of Art and Gaynor was a textile artist.

Their collaborative pieces straddle the intersecting fields of sculpture and craft. Craft, because the discipline of carving is central to their work, and sculpture because the artists are concerned with the representation of objects through the development of a formal language. The artists comment that their work is, 'about the encounter of hand and wood, in this case; tough, grainy, English oak, mediated by very sharp, very traditional, steel gouges (often over a hundred years old). Pattern and texture emerge from the repetitive nature of the act of carving, working onto fluid forms somewhere between vessels and the memories of bodies.'

Martin and Dowling work almost exclusively in white lime wood and oak. Lime wood for its subtlety and smooth texture and oak for the ruggedly fibrous nature that can be scorched or limed. The use of gouges allows the artists to create complex shadow relief across the surface of the works that emphasises a fluidity and rhythm of textiles to this least fluid of mediums.

Martin and Dowling live and work in Gloucestershire, U.K. They have an established international reputation and an impressive collector base, having sold a large group of pieces to haute couture designer Karl Lagerfeld and to actress Joanna Lumley. The artists work is also held in many public collections, including Boston Museum of Fine Art, USA; Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery (Contemporary Art Society purchase) UK; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK; Ruskin Gallery, Sheffield, UK; and The Wood Turning Center, Philadelphia, USA.

Malcolm Martin and Gaynor Dowing's e-catalogue of available works including prices