Auckland based artist Paul Radford studied at the School of Fine Arts Auckland and has exhibited throughout New Zealand for over 30 years. His body of work references both Pacific and modernist traditions. The mask-like heads bring to mind both Pacific Island totem figures and Brancusi-esque forms in a manner which welcomes exploration and interpretation. Repeatedly Radford’s blank faces lack distinguishing facial features but despite this, the forms evoke character and emotion through shade and painterly texture.

With a rich working history in commercial and set design as well an established grounding in fine arts practice, Radford is a technically virtuous painter whose work experiments with the nature of aesthetics of nature and visual knowledge.

Radford points out that his “…work with the human head has been concerned with the nature of our perception. The object is a head, but the subject of the work is the point and the process of perception - That is from cognition to recognition.”

headland SCULPTURE ON THE GULF 2009 will be the first time Paul Radford has exhibited on the coast of Waiheke Island, and I for one look forward to seeing the form his next sculpture takes.

Parts of this bio courtesy of www.coca.org.nz (thanks)

Tags: Artist, Paul Radford, Sculpture on the Gulf

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