MARTIN & DOWLING

Malcolm Martin of the esteemed wood-sculpting duo speaks to Dominique Corlett about a quarter of a century of collaboration, and letting the work lead the way

- Dominique Corlett

Back in the late 1990s, wood-sculpting when artists, and married couple, Malcolm Martin and Gaynor Dowling first started working together, they each brought specific and complementary skills to the table.

Malcolm was fine-art trained and had made sculptures in various materials before finally settling on wood. Gaynor had trained in textiles and at the time was creating fine-art felting: surface pattern and texture were her thing.

Having met a year or two earlier on the West Country exhibition circuit, theirs was a fortuitous encounter, both romantically and professionally. Their initial interest in each other's work developed into something more, as Gaynor joined forces with Malcolm in exploring surface decoration, which would provide the finish to his sculpted wooden vessels. 'I was coming from more of a carving background and Gaynor was from a world of pattern and texture. We thought bringing the 3D and the 2D together was rather interesting, so it evolved into a proper, full-time collaboration,' says Malcolm.

Over the 25 years they have worked together professionally as Martin and Dowling, the couple have built a body of work exploring this melding of the 2D and 3D, which includes pieces now held in a dozen public collections, from the Philadelphia Museum of Art to the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery.