Terrence Coventry

Terence Coventry was born in Birmingham in 1938. He studied fine art at Stourbridge (1954). Having done National Service in the RAF (1959-61), he was accepted by the Royal College of Art in 1961 to study painting, but left after a year and took up farming in west Cornwall. It was not until 1985 that he began to make sculpture his major activity, triggered by the vast amount of elm wood on his land that became available for carving as a result of Dutch elm disease.

It is from farming that Coventry derives most of his inspiration and stimulus. Bulls, birds, cows and boars frequently feature in his sculpture, as does the human figure. The land, its contrasts and changing atmosphere are also influences expressed in the form and surface texture of his animals and figures. Farming is a practical pursuit, requiring that the farmer, in addition to caring for his stock, must repair fences, gates and agricultural machinery, and tend the land. Coventry says: 'Farming is not that different from making sculpture. One spends a lot of one's time making things and solving the same sort of constructional problems. It is elemental in the same way: one may not be dealing with clay but one is dealing with earth to a large extent. I get a tremendous amount of my inspiration for subject-matter from my association - for the greater part of my working life - with farming.'

Throughout the 1990s Terence Coventry has exhibited his work widely in Britain, mostly in the West Country, and also in Belgium. He has also undertaken public commissions which have been realised in bronze, most of which are on a monumental scale: Predator 1992, for the Nature in Art Museum, Gloucester; Spiralling Rooks 1995 for St Keverne Health Centre, Cornwall; and A Gof 1997 for St Keverne, Cornwall, to commemorate the 1497 Cornish Rebellion. He has also recently undertaken a number of private commissions. Terence Coventry lives and works in Cornwall.