anthony turner

Born in Kenya in 1959, Anthony Turner lived on a coffee farm until he was seventeen. Early influences include two meticulous Kikuyu craftsmen – Charles the carpentry teacher and Macharia the farm carpenter. Anthony studied psychology at Exeter University and practised as a painter for many years. He studied life-drawing and bronze-casting and was assistant to Peter Randall-Page RA for four years, before beginning his own work in stone in 1994. Anthony’s main workshop is in the Teign Valley on the edge of Dartmoor; he also works in the cowshed here at Asthall.

I like to make these fruiting forms out of stone as everlasting offerings from a grateful soul to a bountiful, fragile paradise. We humans glow in the presence of beauty and so we seek it out, especially when it’s touchable, because the tips of your fingers give you information that your eyes simply cannot.