Dylan Lewis

Artist biography:

Born: 1964, South Africa

Dylan Lewis is a South African artist who has emerged as one of the foremost figures in contemporary sculpture. He studied art the Cape Technicon followed by four years practising taxidermy and museum display art at the Rondevlei Nature Reserve. He returned to study painting under Ryno Swart at Ruth Prowse School of Art in Cape Town, before moving to Stellenbosch, where he has built his own studio and bronze foundry.

Over the past several years Lewis has become increasingly aware of the significance of the wilderness to the human psyche and has been exploring the idea of co-existing internal and external free and untamed wild spaces. This led to his desire to deepen the animal-human interface in his work and in early 2009 he began to explore the male figure for the first time in his career. He has launched himself into a passionate exploration of both male and female figures: a dynamic integration of human, animal and earth, held together by ideas of ancient animalistic belief and myth. This new work represents the on-going human struggle of everyday duality, suggesting that we embrace the tensions between animal and human nature and moreover, that there is beauty to be found in wrestling with that integration.

Lewis´s work features in private collections throughout the UK, Continental Europe, United States and Australia, and he is one of only a handful of living artists to have had more than one solo auction with Christie´s in London.

Dylan Lewis lives and works in Stellenbosch, South Africa.