“He was a superb craftsman and he made the most beautiful work.” After she graduated, Silvia divided her time between East Sussex and Putney, where John lived. (He was her carving tutor.) “I can't tell you how brilliant he was,” she explains. Silvia met her long-term partner, John Roberts, at art school. Before long, Silvia discovered the sculpture department: “I knew instantly that that was what I wanted to do.” The course – which she began in the mid-’80s – focused on conservation and involved ornamental carving in wood and stone. On her return to East Sussex, she began a three-year degree at the City and Guilds of London Art School. There, she worked as an apprentice to a furniture restorer and began taking life drawing classes – a discipline she continues to this day. The following year, she moved to Florence, Italy, where her mother was from. Having studied the piano throughout childhood, Silvia recalls a “sudden craving to work with hands – not just at piano, but actually physically work.” Her career began in restoration with the National Trust, who enrolled her on a year-long history of art course at the V&A. I remember all their faces terribly well, and I think that started me off on portraiture. “Sitting in the audience, I would just be mesmerised by these interesting artists. “ I think my own interest in portraiture possibly goes back to those days, ” she reflects. From the age of nine, Silvia attended with her mother. The former home of the portrait painter, Sir Oswald Birley, and his wife, the artist and gardener, Rhoda Birley, it became known throughout the 1960s and ’70s for its longstanding festival of music and the arts. “And I’d known of this wonderful place since I was a child…”Ĭharleston Manor was instrumental in Silvia’s decision to become an artist. The downside to this is that the work cannot be displayed outside: “I needed a barn,” she says. Instead, the work is displayed in direct plaster and only cast once it is sold.
#TOAST BURN MARKS DRAWING SERIES#
These pale, textured forms include a mother and child joined in the shape of a crescent moon, an angular seat that can be read as two companions and a series of still, contemplative figures with hollow ovals at their centres, framing the view beyond.įor Silvia, the cost of casting her works in weatherproof material (bronze, jesmonite or resin) is prohibitive. The exhibition includes several of Silvia’s clay portrait sculptures – her award-winning depiction of the composer, John Tavener, is here, his eyes closed, his thoughts consumed by new melodies – and her expanding body of garden sculptures. “But I’ve reached a stage now where I think it's time for it to go out otherwise, what's the point of making it?” “I've only ever exhibited my clay portraits before – I've never exhibited my own personal ideas, so it's quite a big step for me,” she admits. “I think of them as ideas squeezed in clay, or little poems, scribbled.” In recent weeks, she has been busy setting up an exhibition at Charleston Manor – a private estate not to be confused with Charleston House. When we speak, Silvia’s studio is uncharacteristically empty, aside from her shelves of shapely maquettes. It is a rudimentary, deeply private space with a concrete floor, wood-burning stove, a water tank and little else besides her sculptures. Silvia’s studio was once an open cattle shed at the end of her garden that dates back to around 1780, when the cottage formed part of a smallholding. You wouldn’t believe the number of layers I have to put on before I go into the studio.” And the winters are really tough because we’re in a frost hollow. There’s nothing like television or central heating. It is idyllic – but I have to point out – it is an incredibly simple life. “I wander around looking at the trees with a mug of tea. “My morning begins by feeding our white doves,” she explains.
“I am totally in nature here, and that certainly influences my whole life, my routine and my work.” Silvia doesn't say precisely where she is in rural East Sussex – only that she has lived within the same 10-mile radius for much of her life, and in the same flint cottage for over 40 years. “I live in a magical place,” explains the artist, Silvia MacRae Brown.
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