HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE TALENTED MR LEWIS
Lucienne van Pul speaks to one of the world’s leading sculptors
Dylan Lewis has much to celebrate. Not only is it his birthday weekend, he’s also celebrating an international career as one of the world’s foremost sculptors spanning over two decades. In Stellenbosch, a sculpted indigenous garden bears testament to his illustrious career. It comprises more than 60 works, a comprehensive record of Lewis’s artistic development, exploring the Jungian notion of “the wilderness within”.
And last week, bidding opened on 10 Dylan Lewis sculptures at the Strauss & Co North South live virtual auction.
Lewis has had exhibitions in Paris, Sydney, Toronto, Houston and San
Francisco, as well as numerous one-man exhibitions in London. He is among the few living artists to have held solo auctions at Christie’s London. We spoke to the artist.
Lucienne van Pul: Dylan, happy birthday. There’s loud music in the background. Are you busy creating as we speak? What are you busy with — on your birthday?
Dylan Lewis: I don’t have a legacy of celebrating birthdays per se, it’s the fabric of life that needs to be celebrated and not individual days. What I’m engaged with in a broader sense at this time is my current work — an exploration of the human form and indeed a concretisation of emotion in human form. And I’ve always loved working to blaring music!
LvP: You were born into a highly artistic family. Please tell us about your background and your adventures as an artist that led to this point.
DL: There have been many adventures. I grew up in a family of artists. My father was an accomplished sculptor, my mother and grandmother were painters, and my greatgrandfather was an architect. I decided I wanted to study art, so enrolled — and failed first year. So although I grew up in a family of artists, I initially didn’t fare well as an artist. I then went on to study taxidermy and nature conservation — only returning to art formally in 1990.
LvP: You’ve been represented by the Everard Read Gallery both in SA and in the UK for 25 years — most recently for your Cape Town exhibition. Please tell us about your journey as an artist — from the cat sculptures to your current body of work.
DL: It’s a complex and largely psychological journey — when I was younger I was concerned with the image of wilderness, and big cats are of course apex predators, with immense symbolic value. They hold wild ecosystems intact and are perceived to be the custodians of wilderness.
The last 10 years have held a deepening interest into an inner journey of “internal wilderness” for me. We come into the world as children — authentic and wild. Much of our adult lives are about taming out the wilderness to adapt to our families and communities. My current work forms a connection to the untamed inner wilderness.
I needed to move on as an artist from the cat symbolism, which I felt was limiting at times, to delve deeper.
LvP: This week, 10 of your sculptures went on auction at the Strauss & Co North South live virtual auction. One of the cats, lot 924, Standing Leopard III maquette (S3340), is being sold to support a Cape Town theatre struggling to survive in the current situation. Please tell us more about these specific works.
DL: These works are largely representative of my first phase as an artist, what I became well known for and also typical of the exploration of the cat as a symbol of southern African wilderness.
It’s fortuitous that it’s my birthday weekend, which marks the auction of some of the works from this first phase of my journey as an artist.
Catch the Strauss & Co auction, which includes Dylan Lewis sculptures, until Wednesday November 11.
● straussart.co.za