Jon Edgar

The Portrait Head in Terracotta 3 day course has been running at West Dean since 2005. Jon’s experience creating bespoke sculpture courses for UCA, Canterbury, Yorkshire Sculpture Park and The Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts relates to core observational skills and the (lost) language of form and mass once taught to art students like Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore.

He is presently creating a posthumous head of Fanny Cornforth, the pre-Raphaelite muse of Rossetti, and continuing the Environment Head Series, portraying those who contribute to our continuing life on earth.

He trained at the Frink School of Sculpture after attending Exeter and London Universities. His public works can be seen on Art UK: https://artuk.org/discover/curations/a-virtual-private-view-with-a-living-sculptor

Describe your approach to teaching:

My approach to teaching is rigorous but fun, aiming to identify the needs of each student; to give them a personal action plan. Knowledge is unimportant; commitment to seeing and exploring is.

What inspires your work?

My work is inspired by the landscape and the unforeseen, but tends to revert to figurative interaction. Portraiture is influenced by seeing with perception; qualities are believed to creep into the work rather than being consciously placed there.