CELIA SMITH WIRE SCULPTURE - Canwood Gallery

Celia Smith is an artist who draws with wire, as others draw with pencil.  For her, creating sculptures out of wire is like drawing in three dimensions. Birds are her main inspiration; capturing their movement and character is her primary concern. She finds that wire has a spontaneity that can give her sculptures a feeling of life and energy.

The majority of Celia’s sculptures are of domestic and native British birds.  She aims to capture not only their shape but also their movement and character.  A lot of time is spent drawing and studying the birds and often, small wire studies and life-size pieces are made directly in front of the subject.

Growing up as a farmer’s daughter has given Celia a passion for the natural environment. To get ‘close to her subject’ Celia spends time away from her studio in beautiful and inspiring rural locations – these range from studying migratory Whooper swans in Norfolk, creating Greylag Geese in the Shetland islands and drawing breeding seabirds on Skokholm Island in Pembrokeshire.

The materials that Celia uses are mainly sourced from scrap yards, each visit brings new colours and textures which helps to inspire the next creation. Her beautiful forms are constructed out of wires, which may have previously been used for telephone and electrical wiring, or perhaps some rusty fencing found abandoned in a field.

Celia originally studied Fine Art Sculpture at Wimbledon School of Art, graduating in 1996.