Rowena Beaty

Artist statement

I am a Cumbrian artist working with stone. I began stonecarving over 20 years ago while living in the Yorkshire Pennines, before returning to Cumbria in 2013 where I work from my barn studio on the Solway estuary.

I work mostly in Lincoln or Ancaster limestone, and also carve French Lavoux limestone, Cornish polyphant, Italian alabaster and Naxos marble from the Greek Cyclades.

Working with stone gives a sense of connecting with both landscape and deep time. I use traditional hand tools – hammer and chisel, rasps and files – which allow for a direct and instinctive dialogue with the piece of stone I am carving. This feels like making a connection with a material of a vast age and history, and I want my work to carry the same timeless quality, with a sense of the beauty and endurance of stone embodying the human condition.

My work is mostly figurative, concerned with expressing nature’s rhythms and cycles through the human form. Romanesque and Early Greek sculpture have been an inspiration, with the simplicity and vitality they express. Our interconnectedness with landscape and nature continues to be an important theme in my work.

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