Bronze
172 (14 hands) x 238 x 56cm
Edition 3 of 5

Heather Jansch (1948-2021) was a sculptor who specialised in equine figures in driftwood and bronze. From an early age, she was inspired by the drawings of Leonardo and her lifelong passion for horses ran parallel; her childhood sketchbooks were crammed with studies of ponies. She studied fine art at Walthamstow Technical College and Goldsmiths, University of London.

Born Heather Sewell, she married the renowned folk musician, Bert Jansch, in 1968, and the couple moved to a remote hill farm in Wales where Heather bred Welsh Cobs. During this period, which she described as her apprenticeship, Jansch developed a profound understanding of equine behaviour and anatomy. She also became skilled at understanding the minute differences between closely related breeds. Her command and accuracy were quickly noted by breeders, with whom her early traditional equine portraits in oils became much in demand. After ten years in Wales (having separated from Bert in 1974), Heather settled in South Devon in 1981 and a new style emerged in her painting, with vibrant colours and increasingly impressionistic canvases. She felt a restless drive to push her art in a new direction and began working in three dimensions, firstly in copper wire and plaster; but, feeling frustrated that her early sculptures lacked power, vitality, and the life force she could see in her equine subjects, she began working in the driftwood, which was abundant on the beaches of Devon. Driftwood was the key that unlocked her creativity and marked the beginning of a huge and celebrated artistic output.

Heather was chosen to be represented in the Salisbury-based The Shape of the Century exhibition in 1999, which was transferred to London Docklands as part of the Millennium celebrations in 2000. Tim Smit, founder of the Eden Project, invited her to become its artist-in-residence. Her first pieces created within the Biomes there included cork pigs and storks. She then created the life-size driftwood horse that became known as the Eden Horse. Its new scale and ambition took her work to another level and brought recognition from a wider international audience. Because of the limited durability of driftwood when kept outside, Jansch collaborated over several years with skilled mould-makers at a fine art foundry, at last finding a seminal new method of casting highly complex forms in bronze. In later years she also sculpted powerful horse heads and a series of dancers and warrior women assembled from wood, copper and objets trouvés.

Image credit: Kieron Jansch