‘I
get very angry with people who fritter away their talent,’ says Dylan
Lewis quietly. The South African sculptor regards his strong, flexible
hands. ‘One should invest in the talent that one was given.’ Dylan
Lewis has certainly invested in his own ample talent. This investment and
obsessive hard work has brought Dylan a growing international reputation
as a pre-eminent animal sculptor. Since his first international exhibition
in the late 90s he has shown between three and five times a year in the
United Kingdom, North America and South Africa. His sinuous felines give
great pleasure to the collectors (one of whom is Prince Andrew) who have
added Dylan’s work to their collections.
Lewis,
who is self-taught, was born into a family of practical creativity – an
architect, an engineer, a cabinet maker, a painter. His father was a
sculptor who died very suddenly at 46 of a heart attack. ‘Just days
after his death I was in his studio contemplating sculpture,’ says
Lewis, who had up to this point been a painter. ‘That is when I started.
I have never analysed why I made that shift from painting to sculpture –
it just happened. And it was the right thing for me to do.’
His
sculptures are expressive, appealingly figurative. They exude a barely
contained energy evocative of the wild, free places that those who
privileged enough to visit or live in Southern Africa cherish. We talk,
enveloped in the restrained luxury of Harald Bresselschmidt’s Cape Town
restaurant, Aubergine, about Lewis’s powerful and enigmatic animal sculptures.
‘The cat became my focus in 1998 and has remained a focus for me for the
past six years. ‘People buy my work,’ reflects Dylan, ‘because it
has a quality to which they can relate. Clients will say to me when I am
introduced to them that they are surprised that I am so young (he was born
in 1964, in Cape Town), that I don’t look wild-haired, crazy. But that
energy is there. It is sublimated into the work. My surface persona –
clean cut, business-like – is not what I am about. My work shows what
has always been there on the inside. I couldn’t take that raw energy out
of my work, I couldn’t hide that.’
Where
does this fascination with animals originate? What is being expressed in
these savagely elegant creatures? ‘In retrospect I could get all
esoteric about it and say I was exploring a personal journey through the
animals,’ says Lewis, with an ironic chuckle. ‘There is some relevance
to that. But I grew up in Africa. I am passionate about the land, the
landscape, about being in the land. For me animals are mediums to
translate the landscape into a tangible form. They are essentially
portraits of the landscape.
That is my paradox: I am more passionate about
the landscape than about the animals. I would sooner go to Namibia, for
example, to immerse myself in the landscape than I would to go and see
cheetah. But I would take that experience of the landscape and incorporate
it into my sculpture of the cheetah. So the landscape is my primary
thought. I do some abstract sculptures – and those are more directly
about a response to the landscape.’
Our
conversation, delightfully punctuated by perfectly selected wine and
subtle food, drifts to Lewis’s favourite poets – Blake, Shelly, Roy Campbell; and musicians – Beethoven, Wagner.
All artists whose rhythm and powerful earth imagery resonate with the
sculptor. We talk about land and landscape, about animals, about Lewis’s
need to spend time in elemental physical and spiritual spaces. Lewis turns
the conversation to the havoc wreaked on nature by greed and the seemingly
limitless desire of modern people for control.
This has become a central
concern to him in recent years as his work has matured. ‘I used to be paranoid about achievement but I’ve relaxed into
myself,’ he tells me. ‘I used to be incensed about celebrity in art,
and about the fact that craftsmen – genuine craft and skill – were
perceived to be inferior to the fashionable, the sensational. Now I’ve
made my peace with all that.
A lot has happened to me in the last few
years professionally and personally that has forced a refocus. I have gone
through the pain of divorce, and the adventure of a new relationship. This
shocked me to the foundation of my being and this has affected my
work. But this has brought a growing self-awareness about who I am and why
I am doing things. There are subtle, almost invisible signs in my current
work. The significant impact will be on the future – on where I was
heading compared to where I am heading now.’
So he is deeply
involved in the fiery alchemy of the bronze castings for this final Cat
collection. ‘I feel that I have fully explored my subject, my focus has
shifted now.’ Lewis is not sure what the final destination of his new
artistic and personal journey will be. But collectors of his work, local
and abroad, will have much to look forward to as he maps a course through
the landscape he loves and renders with such skill and passion.
Margie
Orford, fast becoming an international author of note with books such as
Like Clockwork (available in English, Afrikaans and currently being
translated into Czech and Russian) and Blood Rose (published by
Oshun in South African in October), great thrillers introducing a
fetching heroine Clare Hart. Currently Margie is working on a third
book in this desirable series - Daddy's Girl.