Jim Partridge and his partner Liz Walmsley treat wood in a way it deserves, not with a finely turned perfection, but with a strong sense of the material’s true vigour, retaining that elemental simplicity you find in lengths of raw timber, and in the essential life of the grain. Their various sculptural bowls (Partridge’s individual work), seats, benches and bridges are not only bold pieces of concentrated form, but carry a semblance of ritual, a sense of directness and simplicity found too in tribal or early European artefacts. But the language is confidently modern, the work as at home with contemporary architecture as in the broader British landscape from which it springs and with which it so skilfully merges. Born in Leeds in 1953, Partridge attended the John Makepeace School at Parnham House. For many years Jim and Liz have been based in Shropshire.
David Whiting