This is a piece that has been around in my workshop for a long time. It began with an interest in Brutalist architecture and constructivist art, turned into a long struggle with form and meaning, and has only been of interest to a couple of people who liked the architectural references.
Although initially working in paint and experimenting with non-traditional media, Sam Bell has been working in stone for the past 20 years, making mainly abstract forms and highly stylised figurative work that explores, in part, the possibilities of what Clive Bell once described as 'significant form', seeking in the process to define the value that lies therein. Form and line, distinguished by the fall of light on surfaces, have been the focus of the sculptures, with thematic contexts ranging from falling figures to Celtic circlings. The artistic context has been modernist. Sam Bell originally trained in England and Carrara, Italy and has exhibited in Devon, Cornwall, Cambridgeshire and Rutland in the U.K. He has worked at studios in Italy and throughout the U.K. and taken part in international sculpture symposiums.
