Duncan Sherwood-Forbes

Artist Statement

My approach to wire is fundamentally rooted in drawing. Rather than constructing volumetric forms, I focus on using wire to divide air, treating space itself as the primary medium. The work is indebted to the discipline of contour drawing, where line is used to separate and define the illusion of volumes by outlining their form.

Like contour drawing, my version of wire sculpture traces boundaries. The core element of sculpture, that differentiates it from other media, is the use of mass. My work is an inversion of that tenet: the wire sculptures do not occupy space so much as propose it; they describe form through absence by using material not to depict the subject directly, but to outline where it would be. The work exists more in the negative space, as defined by the wire, than it does in the material itself. In a deliberate nod to ink, I often leave the wire black, emphasizing its role as a drawn line extended into spatial territory.

My early practice was shaped by constraint: as a teenager without access to welding equipment, I began working almost exclusively with a single, continuous strand of wire. I didn’t have welding torches at my childhood home, and I didn’t like the look of wrapped wire attachments. What began as necessity became a preference. The self-imposed challenge of navigating a subject without breaking the line forced innovation, and while I no longer restrict myself to a single strand of wire, the logic of the continuous line remains foundational.

In terms of content, I pull from traditional subjects: the figure, the still life. I often sculpt directly from life, and the immediacy of working within a time limit forces innovations that I’ll then explore for hours alone in my studio. I will return to the same subject over and over, trying different paths through the form, simplifying here, modifying there. I aim to build my own visual language - I imagine that there’s a platonic ideal of each form that I’m chasing, and that every time I create, I’m getting closer to it.