Keith Rand was born in Rinteln, Germany, in 1956 and studied at Winchester College of Art (1979-82). He was a part-time sculpture technician with the Scottish Sculpture Workshop at Lumsden between 1986 and 1988, becoming the Technical Director of Mobil Young Sculptors, Aberdeen International Youth Festival, in 1986. He established his own studio in Craig, Aberdeenshire, in 1987. Rand taught at…
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Keith Rand was born in Rinteln, Germany, in 1956 and studied at Winchester College of Art (1979-82). He was a part-time sculpture technician with the Scottish Sculpture Workshop at Lumsden between 1986 and 1988, becoming the Technical Director of Mobil Young Sculptors, Aberdeen International Youth Festival, in 1986. He established his own studio in Craig, Aberdeenshire, in 1987. Rand taught at Gray's School of Art, Aberdeen (1987-91) and at Glasgow School of Art, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee, and again at Gray's (1990-94). He was elected Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1996, and in the same year moved south, becoming artist in residence at Cannington Agricultural College, Somerset (1996-98). He established a studio at Clarendon, Salisbury, in 1999 and one on the Isle of Purbeck, Dorset, in 2001.
Rand's first solo show, 'Sculpture in the Woods', was held at Crabwood Nature Reserve, Winchester, in 1993. Since then he has shown frequently in Scotland and England, with his most recent one-man exhibition at the Stephen Lacey Gallery, London, in 2002. He has featured in group shows in Britain, Europe and Japan. He works to commission, and pieces can be seen at the Lumsden Sculpture Walk, Scotland; Grizedale Forest, Cumbria; the International Building, Hokkaido, Japan; the National Trust at Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire; and Sustrans cycle tracks in Bristol. When in Scotland Rand received an impressive number of awards and prizes. He has worked in residencies in Britain and Japan and attended symposia in the Czech Republic, Japan, Scotland and Sweden. His sculpture is in public and private collections in the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, America and Japan.
Wood is Keith Rand's preferred material for sculpture and he also practices as a land artist. 'What interests me,' he says, 'is the movement of a line, an edge, the shift of surface planes that I observe in plants, open landscapes and the human figure. The transformation of my ideas into sculptures or land-works evolves through a combination of carving timber into tensile elements and exploring the harmony of assemblage.'
