Woodcuts and Engraved Wood Panels

About

Man‘s relationship with his environment and the world is explored through David Risk Kennard's stunning range of engravings and prints next month at Gallery 54 in Mayfair. Taking us back to the very essence of the Earth as being an essential part of man's existence, Woodcuts & Engraved Wood Panels is a series of organically inspired woodcut prints and engraved panels of tree trunk taken from Kennard's studio in West Dorset. This series draws upon traditional, timeless tales and folk stories, used to explore man's relationship with both itself and nature, to express the artist's desire to remind us of the world that is all around us but often ignored. William Blake-like figures, reminiscent of characters from the excavations of Pompeii, can be found hidden amongst glorious, organic landscapes. Etched and carved in a unique illustrative style, many of the trees were grown by the artist himself, on his land in rural Dorset. Kennard said, ‘Our relationship with the earth has to be the centre of our existence. If you forget how to relate to the earth and what the earth provides, like food and water, it will be destroyed.The earth is the very essence of our survival, we mustn't lose touch with it.' Having been brought up by artists and raised in a world full of mythical faeries and the spirits of the landscape, Kennard's career has taken him from being donned ‘controversial' by the BBC and winning the Art's Council Purchase Prize, to studying traditional oil painting techniques in Paris and whittling wood in Dorset. David uses local reeds, cut from the local river bed to add line, tone and shape to his wooden panels. These marks are applied with an enchanting fluidity and appear to move before your eyes, as if dancing to the music of the world that surrounds them. The exhibition, Woodcuts and Engraved Wood Panels, will be on show at Gallery 54, 54 Shepherd Market, W1 J7OX, from Tuesday 25 to Saturday 29 September, 10am to 7pm.