Wood Carving Artists

From the poetess Sappho who lived on Lesbos, one poem has survived. It is about her female beloved who nevertheless chose a man. We are writing 570 years before Christ. The poem inspired the Dutch sculptor Gerhard Lentink (1956) to create a monumental sculpture, in […]

Was it a child’s toy? Or was it a ritual figurine, used by a shaman to appease the gods? With a handle to better hold this ‘Man of Willemstad’? We will never know for certain. What is certain is that the oak figurine is 7,500

Type ‘wood carving’ into Google and mostly figurines from Bali appear. On Marktplaats and Etsy there is always some wood carving from this Indonesian island for sale. But according to former art dealer Frans Leidelmeijer, almost all those busts and masks should be counted as

Stefan Balkenhol (1957) makes art with humor. His businessmen always wear a white shirt and black trousers. But sometimes such a sculpture holds a teddy bear pressed against its chest. Or the businessman hangs high on the neck of a giraffe. Or he sits backwards

Being allowed to take wood carving lessons from a master wood carver. That is a rare opportunity in the Netherlands. Not many other craftsmen than Jan van Harskamp can restore a classic mantelpiece in a palace to its perfectly original state. Learning the craft from

Waving wood. Look at the strings on that violin. They are carved from wood. That curved sheet music paper. That stem of those tulips. According to legend, Grinling Gibbons (1648 – 1721) had a vase with wooden flowers hanging in front of the door of

Mary mourns, that is quite clear. She stands at the foot of the cross, beneath the dying Christ. The fact that a sculptor depicted human emotions in such a natural way made Claus Sluter (1350-1406) a great innovator in art. His realism paved the way

Charcoal is her medium. With it she draws meter-high landscapes on canvas. Dutch jungles. Nature that is allowed to go its own way. Biodiversity. Anouk Griffioen’s canvases are of museum quality. Good artists with biodiversity as a theme are few and far between. For this

Intriguing news. In a cave in Morocco, 33 shell beads were found, which must be about 150 thousand years old. They would be the first jewelry in the world. But is that really so? Wouldn’t the first ornaments have been made of wood? Undoubtedly. But