John Maine

John Maine was born in Bristol in 1942. He studied at the West of England College of Art, Bristol (1960-64) and at the Royal College of Art, London (1964-67), where he was a contemporary of Nigel Hall, Ken Draper and John Panting. A two-year Fellowship at Gloucestershire College of Art followed. Travels in the Yukutan, Mexico, had an early influence on his work, and he developed the ideas generated there during the course of his fellowship at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (1979-80), the first artist to be accorded that honour. He then lived in London, with periods of time spent in Dorset working on Portland stone and in Italy working in the famous marble quarries of Carrara. His first one-man exhibition was held at the Serpentine Gallery in London, 1972, since when he has exhibited regularly in Britain. He has also received many awards, amongst which are the Royal College of Art Drawing Prize (1967), Arts Council Awards (1972. 1975 and 1977), the Mark Rothko Memorial Trust Award (travel to USA and Mexico, 1979), an Elephant Trust Award for Chiswell Earthworks (1990-95) and a Henry Moore Foundation Award (1991). John Maine was elected Royal Academician in 1995.

Much of John Maine's work has been in the form of public commissions, notably the Chiswell Earthworks in Portland, Dorset (1986-93), the Lewisham 2000 project (from 1991) and his largest sculpture to date, the monument commemorating the completion of the Ryugasaki New Town Hokuryudai Area Development in Japan (1993).

Landscape, land forms, ancient sites, structures within nature, mathematical systems, solids, surface planes and sections through forms, all have their place in John Maine's vocabulary as a sculptor. Stone, and in particular Portland stone from Dorset where he lives, is his preferred medium.