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john grainger

 

Welcome

This is my first website which I am building as a convenient way to show and share my sculpture and photography with other people. For me it is a new and exciting thing to be involved in and I hope that you will find something of interest to make your visit here worthwhile.

 

My early years

I was born and spent my childhood in Kenya where I was introduced to the wonders of the natural world by my father, a medical entomologist, who spent much of his time in the bush sometimes with me as a companion.  As a child I was encouraged by my mother to draw and paint and, for as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by sculpture in all its forms though I have had no formal art training.

 

 

 

Sculpture

Having failed ‘O’ Level Art, my interest in drawing was only revived in the 1970s when I took a short life drawing course while doing ecological research for a PhD in Britain. As for sculpture, I am largely self-taught, though I did take an evening course in sculpture with Delise Reich at the Michaelis School of Art in 2013.

 

In 2010 I moved to Cape Town from Egypt and it was here that I rediscovered my passion for sculpting, aided in part by the lowered demands of employment. My initial inspiration and motivation came from observing the lives of homeless people on the streets of Cape Town that prompted the first series of sculptures which in my web page I have called “social comment” - hopefully the titles speak for themselves.  The figures are “sketches” that represent actual individuals seen and met on the streets of Cape Town and my responses to the story of their lives. 

 

The boy on crutches titled “arms race” I met at a robot who would move swiftly between the stopped cars on crutches, his leg cut off by a train. The “invisible man” was encountered in Company Gardens – essentially naked but for trousers torn to the waist – scavenging for food in the midst of people.  The woman with the child – life burden - was slumped on a church doorstep near where I live, and “passing hope” is a portrait of man I see almost every day on a corner near the local bottle store.   

My pieces have all been rather small until now but as my confidence has grown along with my experience of modelling materials and armatures I can now contemplate working at a larger scale.

 

Later I began to work on wildlife subjects but with some trepidation as there are so many talented sculptors who have spent years observing and sculpting their subjects to achieve their creations and I was uncertain whether I could offer something of interest. As with my response to the homeless people I wanted to produce work that was more than representational and decorative  but would hopefully challenge and express views.

 

My wildlife pieces in the main are intended to reflect on the complexities of our ambiguous relationship with the natural world and the value of wilderness to the human psyche. Some stand in mute testimony of our individual culpability for the increasingly degraded state of our planet.

 

For instance the “Rhinoplasty” piece is intended to challenge our concepts of “wildness” and the values it holds for us. It surely is one species that shouldn’t need a nose job! When such an iconic species is compromised, dehorned and escorted to pasture by armed guards to ensure its conservation the rhino is essentially tamed and domesticated and in the process it and we are diminished. As Aldo Leopard writes “Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow... the creation of new wilderness in the full sense of the word is impossible."

 

The young elephant, holding the tusk and titled “Family values”, perhaps speaks for itself:  elephants are the only species other than man that appears to grieve for dead relatives, picking up and examining their bones in an almost ritualistic manner.

 

The humpback whale attempting a breach entangled in nets is titled “Net loss” and is an allegory for the state of our seas. Almost all of the world’s major fisheries are now overexploited mostly beyond recovery and the situation is further compounded by the damage caused from the wasteful by-catch of non-target species and the careless disposal into the seas of our garbage and fishing gear which continues to needlessly catch.

 

As a conservationist I believe that wild places and wild species will only thrive with local people’s support and only if they benefit from the sensible and sustainable use of the natural resources. However in the face of the many exogenous challenges that wildlife and wild places now face , including growing populations and excessive demands for dwindling supplies of  nature’s products, our exploitation of the planet’s natural resources has become unsustainable to the point where our own future may eventually be jeopardised.

 

Photography

I have included a selection of my landscape photographs in the gallery. I am privileged to have lived much of my life in the desert lands of the Middle East and many of my photographs are of landscapes from such places as the Western Desert in Egypt and the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia. Until around 2006 I was using film and though I have scanned a number of my numerous slides, I have only included recent digital images in the gallery for now.

 

I have an abiding fascination for deserts. The extraordinary variety of forms and the subtle patterns of sand deserts I find seductive, as the continuous winnowing of the sand grains removes all blemishes of human intrusion to maintain the sense of untouched wilderness.

 

Rock deserts on the other hand appeal through their lack of soil and vegetation which reveals the earth at its most elemental. The juxtaposition and contortions of geological strata, mineral stainings and weathering patterns combine to provide sensory kaleidoscopes unlike any other landscape.

 

 

 

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