Heather Jansch

Fine Art @ Lympstone Manor take great pleasure in showing a selection of pieces by Heather Jansch, a leading contemporary British sculptor and writer best known for life size driftwood horses.

Like many great artists it all started with childhood passions. Heather’s early sketchbooks recorded the characteristics and movements of the horses in the fields surrounding the family house. She was strongly influenced by the work of the great Leonardo da Vinci, the power and unerring lines she achieves using a wide variety of materials pay testament to his artistic legacy.

“From the beginning my twin passions were drawing and horses, my hero was Leonardo da Vinci, and my dreams were of becoming an artist living in a wooded valley with clear flowing water at my doorstep and horses grazing all around.”

Heather spent years honing her skills and her painstaking attention to detail produces exquisite works of differing scale and subject matter. Looking to overcome driftwood’s inherent lack of durability, she turned to a fine art bronze foundry collaborating with their mould makers to solve the problems of casting complex forms. It was a triumph, a labour of love ensuring even the most fragile original is guaranteed posterity.

Where weight is an issue on inaccessible sites, cold cast bronze resin can be an inexpensive alternative and her recent experiments have produced very interesting work.

Heather’s life-size driftwood horses set a trend when in 2000 they featured in The Shape of the Century – One hundred Years of Sculpture in Britain at Canary Wharf alongside, Moore, Frink, Hepworth, Caro et al. Shortly afterwards her work was at ‘The Eden Project’ in Cornwall when its founder, Tim Smit KBE, bought her horse. It was voted the best loved exhibit but after ten years and the second restoration the decision was taken to remove the original until it could be cast in bronze. The artist’s work is currently commissioned and exhibited throughout the world.