Dylan Lewis, An untamed force, by Ian McCallum

Dylan Lewis, An untamed force, by Ian McCallum. Random House Struik. Imprint: Struik Nature. Cape Town, South Africa 2015. ISBN 9781928213017 / ISBN 978-1-92-821301-7

Dylan Lewis, An untamed force, by Ian McCallum. Dylan Lewis's reputation as one of the world's finest wildlife sculptors is already established.

His art is born of respect for our deep biological and psychological connection to the wild, and a concern for the environmental issues of our time. For him, wild animals and the wild areas in which they live are far more than elegant subjects of art; they are an essential part of human identity. Wildness and wilderness are not only "out there"; they exist within each one of us. But most of us have forgotten that we are the human animal, biologically and psychologically a part of the web of life. Today, it is hard to deny that we have lost our sense of equilibrium in nature. As a consequence, the wild areas and wild animals of the world have suffered. And so have we. Disconnected from that which is rich and raw and untamed in us, we have become a psychologically lonely and fragmented species. Dylan's powerful and potentially disturbing works - humans with animal masks, some with claws, others with wings or horns - are all mirrors of the essential nakedness of the human-animal interface, and fitting reminders of where we have come from. The creative force of the imagination is everyone's gift: a poetic instinct that's unique to each individual. Resonating with nature, it's a deep exploratory instinct unsatisfied by pure measurement, unafraid of the dark recesses of the soul, unconvinced by dogma and deceit. It's a force of individuation, of discovering and cultivating an authority that is natural to oneself, of finding one's element, one's gift; and of subjecting it to that inner fire of creativity, over and over. It is a force that constantly evolves and that refuses to become stuck in any one form of expression. Such is the process of sculpting. In the pages that follow, it will become clear that the force of Dylan's talent as a sculptor cannot be separated from the memories and geography of his childhood. From an early age he was exposed to the wilderness, to animal encounters and to the world of clay, canvas and paint. Guided by the artistic eye of his parents, he learned the discipline of attention to measurement, structure and proportions. Importantly, he learned the value of drawing from wild, living forms. As he says, "It allowed me to get into the skin of the animal". These encounters forged in him an identity upon which the signature of wilderness would remain indelible. Arising out of the early artistic influences in his life would be a natural sequence of clearly defined, independent phases of work. From painting landscapes, he shifted to sculpting birds and then Africa's great cat species - beautifully proportioned and elegant. He subsequently produced his first smooth, unblemished human feminine forms and, soon thereafter, his rugged, animal-masked and shamanic masculine forms. Finally came the huge and sometimes disturbing fragmented pieces. Every chapter, every phase of his work has fed and fuelled the next. There is an interacting circularity about his work. Trying to find where it begins and ends is like trying to discover the hiding place of a leopard. The fragmented forms, for example, appear - albeit veiled - very early in Dylan's work. It is as if they have always been there, waiting.

This is an excerpt from Dylan Lewis, An untamed force, by Ian McCallum.

Title: An untamed force
Authors:  Dylan Lewis; Ian McCallum
Photographer: Gerda Genis
Genre: South African Art
Publisher: Random House Struik
Imprint: Struik Nature
Cape Town, South Africa 2015
ISBN 9781928213017 / ISBN 978-1-92-821301-7
Softcover, 23 x 28 cm, 224 pages, throughout colour photographs and illustrations