Impressions in Stone brings together five contemporary sculptors from Scotland and across the UK who specialise in letter cutting and carving, employing intense craftsmanship and natural materials.
Impressions in Stone presents exciting new work from Mary Bourne, Martin Cook, Gus Fisher, Gillian Forbes and Zoe Wilson.
Mary Bourne is a sculptor based in the rural North East of Scotland. She trained at Edinburgh College of Art where she received both a BA (hons) and Postgraduate degree in sculpture, before teaching at Edinburgh College of Art and Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen.
The majority of Bourne’s work is carved from natural stone or polished slate. Her work is about man’s relationship with the environment and the idea of the passage of time is recurrent in her work. Medium is, arguably, the most vital element. She treats the material in different ways depending on what she is trying to convey. Human intervention, influenced by, and altering, natural processes. She explains that each technique helps her to find subtle physical forms for her poetic ideas.
Mary Bourne has been recognised with several prizes and awards including the Highland Visual Artist Award 2017, Hope Scott Trust Award 2016 and the Royal Scottish Academy: Highland Society of London Award 2013. She has received numerous public commissions, serves on various arts organisation committees and boards, and in 2012 was elected to the Royal Scottish Academy. In 1999 Mary received a commission to produce public work at the Scottish Poetry Library at Riddle’s Court. She created the Carpet of Leaves – oak leaves in the flagstones surrounding a lectern in the Library’s open-air performance space. In Inverness Bourne was commissioned to make sculptural seating, and inlay pavement flags and the flood wall with lines of Ken Cockburn poems. She has also been commissioned to produce unique works in Banff, Cumbria, Livingston and Dundee.
Public collections include: Aberdeenshire Council, Highland Council, East Lothian Council, North Ayrshire Council, North Lanarkshire Council, Moray Council, Perth and Kinross Council, Barrow Borough Council, West Lothian Council, The Norton Priory Museum in Cheshire, City of Sunderland, Nanao City Japan, Victoria Hospice in Kirkaldy, Mugdock Country Park, Riddles Court, Edinburgh Moray Council, Macmillan Cancer Care, Stobhill Hospital Wards Art Collection.
Mary’s work featured in Impressions In Stone in February 2022 and A Natural Selection in May 2019
Martin Cook comes from a family of carvers dating back to 1730 and is based in Buckinghamshire. All of his work is individually designed and hand crafted using traditional tools. He approaches new pieces of work by hand drawing on board and then, using his knowledge of historical letterforms and calligraphy, creates a unique design that is then hand carved into natural British stone or wood using a hammer and chisel. Recent commissions include carved lettering for The Reading Room of The British Museum.
‘The love of art and good craftsmanship has run through my veins all my life. I drew from the moment I could pick up a pencil and have found no reason so far to stop.’ – Martin Cook
The family tradition continues with Martin’s son Matthew who has been an integral party of the workshop for the past three years.
Martin exhibited in our Wood exhibition, April 2019.
Gus Fisher is an artist and craftsman working with letter design and stone carving. He has been a member of the Scottish Lettercutter’s Association for several years, a prestigious organisation that seeks to promote the traditional art of letter-carving.
Through recent travel and adventure, Gus had the space for inner tranquillity to support the creation of his new pieces.
Gus Fisher is a lettering designer and carver working in stone for the past 18 years. He takes great care to attend to the personality and detail of each letter. His works have featured in The Scottish Gallery since 2014 and Gus has enjoyed creating pieces for a number of exhibitions using traditional and modern forms. Alongside his commissioned work, Gus leads workshops for lettering design and carving techniques for individuals and groups.
His recent projects include:- The Bomber Command Memorial – London; The British Normandy Memorial – France; Commemoration Plaque Usher Hall – Edinburgh; Horatio’s Garden – Queen Elizabeth Hospital Glasgow; Old Royal Infirmary – EFI, The University of Edinburgh.
My studio sits on the edge of a wood in rural Perthshire and am constantly inspired by the natural elements around me. Even after 30 years of stone carving I still love the inherent qualities of the stones I choose to work with – sandstone, limestone, slate & marble. The marks that my chisels make on the stone and the durability of these pieces fascinate me.
Based in Glenfarg in Perthshire, Gillian Forbes creates unique hand-carved pieces in a wide variety of British stone. The inspiration for her carving is drawn mostly from the natural world that surrounds her in rural Perthshire. After graduating from Glasgow School of Art, and subsequently studying architectural carving at Weymouth College in Dorset, Gillian started her stone carving business in 1995 in the small hamlet of Path of Condie. During this time, Gillian undertook a wide variety of both private and public art commissions, including carvings on Tay Street Flood Prevention Wall, large marine life elements in Morecambe, lettered panels on the Canongate Wall at the Scottish Parliament and most recently working with the sculptor John Maine to letter the memorial to Stephen Hawking in Westminster Abbey. Through her long-standing association with Memorials by Artists, Gillian became a founding member of the Scottish Lettercutters Association in 2001. In 2005 she was awarded a QEST scholarship, which enabled her to spend four months improving her model-making, casting and carving skills at the workshop of the French stone carver, Marc Chevalier Lacombe near Orleans, France. In 2008 Gillian won the J.D. Fergusson Arts Award Travel Prize to realise her ambition to travel to Carrara, Italy to learn marble carving at the Arco Arte Studio with sculptor Boutros Romhein.
Gillian presented a solo exhibition, Treasured, in February 2023.
“Following my degree in fine art, I stumbled across an opportunity working with stone. I didn’t realise at the time but it was the beginning of my new career.
For over 10 years I grounded myself in mastering the basics of stone masonry and utilising my artistry to become an expert in lettering and precision carving. As well as two apprenticeships, I completed a three-year diploma in Historic Stone Carving at the City and Guilds of London Art School.
During my carving diploma I was fortunate enough to receive a scholarship from the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust (QEST) a charity that supports the continuation of traditional British crafts. QEST’s interest in my work and support of my studies helped me gain confidence to develop my skills further. To be selected into their family of British craftsmen was a huge honour.
Now settled back in the UK, my creative passion still lies in working with natural stone. I want to share my fascination for carving complex geometric patterns and show how the age-old craft of stone carving can bridge the gap into art. Where possible I choose British stones, with Welsh slate being one of my favourites.”
Zoe’s work is featured in Impressions In Stone in February 2022.
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