Collection: Amanda Wood

I've worked as an artist since I finished my degree in Fine Art/Sculpture in 1981. 
Over the last four decades a wide variety of experience and work has shaped my practice.

I spent some of my time in the early days helping to realise the vision of other artists - working as an assistant in a bronze sculpture casting foundry; with a Trompe l'oeil artist, painting murals in stately homes, climbing scaffolding to gild ceilings in London city buildings, painting marble effects on walls in museums and department stores. I found an Illustrators Agent and reinvented myself as a children's illustrator, working from home while my children were young. Later, working in schools as resident artist, I learned about my own practice while running art groups and teaching drawing.

Recent influences

The last 10 years since moving from North London to Folkestone, back to my Kentish roots, have in many ways reflected my slightly eccentric, meandering career. I find myself constantly moving between media, whether it's sculpture, painting, ceramics and I can never settle or decide quite who I am...
Maybe the common thread is the narrative, the pictures that are always in my mind and the process of drawing - of trying to capture, in a stroke of paint or by shaping a piece of clay - the startling movement of a hare or the powerful strength of the sea swimmer...