Martin Jennings
Martin Jennings is a British sculptor, born in 1957, who works in the figurative tradition. He studied calligraphy, lettercutting and stonecarving following an MA in English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. Over the following years he fulfilled numerous commissions to carve memorials and architectural inscriptions for churches and churchyards, cathedrals, colleges and public buildings.
Increasingly he was commissioned to carve stone figure sculptures and to model portrait busts from life in his Oxford studio. In the year 2000 Jennings’s sculpture of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, the last to be modelled from the sitter in her lifetime, was installed in St Paul’s Cathedral, London.
Jennings representations of great writers and poets are particularly well-known: John Betjeman at St Pancras Station, Philip Larkin in Hull, Charles Dickens in Portsmouth and George Orwell outside BBC Broadcasting House.
The Women of Steel in Sheffield and George Orwell at the BBC each received the national PMSA Marsh Award for Excellence in Public Sculpture in 2017 and 2018.
