Portraiture with Wilfrid Wood
Volunteers are the backbone of the community, often unsung people of all ages who make a big difference to the lives of others. Artist-led workshops build skills of local artists and we recognise the contributions that volunteers make to improving the quality of life locally. As part of the Celebrating Volunteers project.
Photo credit: Sarah Hall, artists in Wilfrid Wood's plasticine portrait workshops
About the workshops
With funding from the Arts Council of England and Sid Valley Help, a local voluntary and community umbrella organisation, we're collaborating with South West Art for their Summer School in August. Community artists and volunteers had a lot of fun creating plasticine-head portraits.
Wilfrid ran three sessions on plasticine-head sculpture on Wednesday 9 and Thursday 10 August at South West Art, Sidmouth. One of the workshops was for 11 to 16 year olds and all the workshops were celebrating the involvement of local volunteers - using art to capture the spirit of volunteering in Sidmouth.
Wilfrid has also created a Wallspace artwork - Holiday Makers in Sidmouth - which is a version of the 3D plasticine portraits in Sidmouth's Museum of Contemporary Art.
About the artist
After dumping a career in graphics, Wilfrid plunged into prop making at cult classic British TV show, Spitting Image. There he learnt his trade as an ‘Apprentice Headbuilder’, starting in the Eyeballs and Blinks department and moving on to Dogs and Sheep.
Fast forward 30 years and he's now a portrait artist. His subjects are famous people, invented characters, strangers and friends. He spends hours studying characters in the supermarket, in the news and on the bus. Wilfrid is commissioned to make both 3D and 2D portraits, regularly drawing people in his Hackney studio. He also creates pastel portraits, mainly of curious individuals who have made contact through Instagram and volunteered their time.
We are grateful for the funding support for this project from
Arts Council England
