Stephen Vince

Stephen Vince (born in England in 1948) grew up in rural England in a farmer’s family. Although he has shown signs of artistic talent as a young child, Vince’s father did not support the idea of artistic career for his son and insisted on young man’s education in a ‘proper’ field. Vince got a degree in agricultural science and began a career as contractor and art history instructor at a college where he also enrolled in sculpture classes. Vince’s background in agricultural science made him aware and concerned about problems of the environment. Convinced that “Nothing can beat the power of art for awakening the public to ecological catastrophes,” he chose art to bring public’s attention to the issues he knew of as scientist—“As an agricultural scientist one produces papers which get filed away for other academics to read in libraries. The problems of the environment had to reach the public…” Vince began creating sculptures of animals and plants from the areas . Often uninspired by confines of a studio Vince brings his equipment to the endangered sites and sculpts close to nature, or he collects natural found materials from a site to later assemble them into a work of art. Similarly, the artist’s sculptures are installed not only in buildings or on city streets but also in the wild – in a marsh, on a mountain top or in the midst of a forest. In late 1980s Vince moved to Australia and soon after to Hong Kong where he has created most of his sculptures.The nearly two-meter aluminum oak leaf was inspired “by the manner in which threatened oaks produce extremely large leaves.” The artist used this symbol to bring attention to the magnitude of the destruction brought to nature by man’s activity, an example of which he witnessed in Australia: “I had never seen a rain forest before journeying to Australia… At Cooloola in Queensland I entered this strange world, a vast dim space enclosed by the forest canopy, a unique magic which man seems desperate to destroy. Not far away we came across a ranch where this forest no longer stood, its tree stumps struggling to come back to life. My plant sculptures portray these living things, which cannot run away from their aggressors, in attitudes of self-protection and defense.”