Figures in a Landscape
Sculpture by Paul Vanstone, Carol Peace and Leonie Gibbs

Exhibiting from Sunday 6 May to Sunday 1 July, 2007
Leonie Gibbs, Paul Vanstone and Carol Peace are all sculptors who work within a strong figurative tradition.
Leonie Gibbs has lived most of her life in Scotland; myths, legends and her love of wild animals have been the most formative influence on her work. With her strong sense of modelling and dynamic movement her figures inhabit an imaginative world of story telling and action played out against the wild romantic landscape of her Scottish roots.
By contrast, Carol Peace’s figures inhabit an inner world of self-reflection. She derives her knowledge of the human body from detailed life drawings but when she begins modelling in clay the figures come from her imagination reaching beyond mere depiction. With their delicately balanced forms and rock like plinths the large scale works relate to forms and volumes found in the landscape, their often elongated limbs and strange proportions lending them a surreal air. They invite the viewer to mediate on the human condition, the step from adolescence to adult hood, the vulnerability of a mother and child or the complexities of relationships.
Paul Vanstone is fascinated by the material properties of his medium. Recently he has abandoned modelling to work directly as a carver. Hunting down the right materials whether from Spain, Italy or Portugal is part of his creative process. The actual physical properties of the stone are part of the language of the finished piece. His most recent work is executed in Thassos marble reflecting the purity of ancient Greek sculpture. In these drapery studies he is playing with formal qualities, pattern across a volume and the contrast between the hardness and coldness of the marble and the warm soft cloth.
Exhibition Hours Thursday, Friday, and Saturday 11am-6pm. All other days including Sundays by appointment Contact Elspeth Moncrieff Moncrieff-Bray Gallery Woodruffs Farm, Egdean, Pulborough, West Sussex RH20 1JX Tel: 07867 978414 mail@moncrieff-bray.com