Terence Coventry

Terence Coventry (1938-2017), gained early entrance to the Stourbridge School of Art in 1952, where the focussed artistic atmosphere suited him ideally and allowed him complete freedom to explore and develop. This translated into early success, culminating in winning the ‘Young Contemporaries’ prize. After a brief stint at the Royal College of Art in 1958, Coventry enrolled for National Service as a Radar Operator, where the structures and radiograms he encountered would have an innate influence on his later sculpture.

Coventry turned to farming in 1962, and thrived for over twenty years in Cornwall, before renewing his long-dormant artistic talent by initially carving pigs from felled tree trunks with a chainsaw, chisels and gouges. Very much a ‘hand’s on’ artist, whose studio resembled a craftsman’s workshop, Coventry worked in wood, plaster, cement reinforced on metal frames, sheet steel and ultimately cast many of his sculptures in bronze. Rooted in a strong figurative tradition, his practice exists in spite of any vagaries or trends in the art world: an intensely personal journey, practical and unpretentious, honest and imbued with great integrity. Always taking his inspiration from the natural world, he deftly transforms an assemblage of shapes into a familiar bird, beast or body.

The Terence Coventry Sculpture Park is a short walk to the south of Coverack in Cornwall, on the Lizard Peninsula. Contained in three small meadows that were once his and his wife’s farm, there are usually around twenty-five sculptures on display.