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READ BIOGRAPHY
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Guy Taplin was born in 1939 in Whitechapel, London's East End, but his family moved to Hereford during the war, where he was surrounded by nature and became impassioned with birds.
When he moved back to London, Guy undertook a number of different jobs, eventually moving to Regent's Park as a labourer and gardener, and later being promoted to looking after the birds. During that period, he started to carve. People would come into the shed where Guy worked and want to buy his carvings, but he refused to sell them. Eventually, under pressure, he did sell them, and he started to become known.
Now Guy has a workshop on the beach in East Anglia at the head of two tidal estuaries, where he is surrounded by birds. Huge winter tides deposit driftwood on the surrounding beaches and it is here that Guy goes to look for material from which to recreate the spirit of his birds. Regarded as one of the truly great wildlife sculptors, Guy Taplin has the rare ability to capture the spirit of the birds he forms.
Since these early beginnings, Guy Taplin has gone on to enjoy considerable selling and exhibition success and has become one of the most celebrated international artists in his field. A selection of his work has been cast in bronze, with sizes ranging from the miniature to the monumental which are ideal for public places, private gardens etc. Examples of the larger pieces can be seen at the London Zoo, Regent's Park.
His work straddles two distinct traditions; that of folk sculpture and 20th century modernism. His carvings are not naive however; they are the products of sophisticated attitudes to what is seen, as well as of intense observation of the thing itself. Taplin is renowned for his being unselfconscious and for his rejection of any form of pretentiousness. He has published his book 'Birds of Creation' chronicling his early childhood in the East End and the beginnings of his remarkable artistic career.
The one thing which does separate Taplin from contemporary sculpture in general, is unselfconsciousness and the complete rejection of any form of pretentiousness. When he first started making carvings, he wanted them to remain anonymous, and it was only very reluctantly - and initially at the insistence of dealers - that he began to sign his work. For him, the carvings are a vehicle, transferring his ideas and feelings about birds and the pleasure he gets from observing them, directly to the spectator.
He has an extraordinary eye for interpreting the animal world and we need people of his talent most urgently.The late Gerald Durrell.
It is not going too far to say that these carvings are visual equivalents for the sound of one hand clappingLucie-Smith, writer). |
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