Sally Matthews

Sally Matthews was born in Tamworth, Staffordshire, in 1964. She studied on the Foundation Course at Loughborough College of Art and Design (1981-82), following this with a degree course in the Department of Sculpture (1983-86), from which she graduated with first-class honours. She travelled in India and Thailand during 1988. The daughter of a vet and of a mother…

Sally Matthews was born in Tamworth, Staffordshire, in 1964. She studied on the Foundation Course at Loughborough College of Art and Design (1981-82), following this with a degree course in the Department of Sculpture (1983-86), from which she graduated with first-class honours. She travelled in India and Thailand during 1988. The daughter of a vet and of a mother who is good with animals, Sally Matthews has used both domestic and wild animals throughout her work. She treats her subjects directly, wishing to express their innate qualities rather than their roles in myth or legend, or wanting to look at characteristics that may have parallels in human behaviour.

An early manifestation of Sally Matthews's work in the public domain was her herd of wild boars at Grizedale Forest in 1986-89. These were made from natural materials found locally and had a disturbingly realistic presence. She liked the idea that they would gradually return to the soil but was also sorry that her original vision faded. More commissions followed regularly throughout the 1990s: sculptures of cows, goats, dogs chasing a peacock, bison, ponies, deerhounds, fallow deer and a flock of curlew have featured up and down the country. Amongst other sculptural commissions in 2003, Matthews was involved in The Big Draw at the Natural History Museum, London. In 2004, she made bison in Bialowieza, Poland, for the 75th anniversary of the return of the bison to the forest. From 2004 to 2005, Matthews worked with photographer Kate Bellis to document hill farming in Tarset, Northumberland, which culminated in a book named Gathering and a tour from Hexham to Glasgow and London.