Geoffrey Dashwood
Geoffrey Dashwood was born in Hampshire in 1947. At the age of 15 he won a place on merit to study fine art at Southampton College of Art but preferring an outdoor life and studying directly from nature he left soon afterwards. For five years he worked for the Forestry Commission as a keeper in the New Forest but after illustrating a New Forest guide for the Commission most of his time was soon taken up illustrating. This work gave him the confidence to become a freelance artist and for the following ten years he concentrated on illustrations, drawings and watercolours.
In 1980 Geoffrey discovered a preference for sculpture. His first pieces were small, highly detailed, realistic studies echoing his earlier drawings, very much in the mainstream tradition of English wildlife and sporting art and comparable in style to the famous nineteenth-century French animalier school of sculpture. Although commercially successful, Geoffrey became increasingly dissatisfied with the restrictions of devout realism and a lack of personal expression. Finally he broke away to create larger, boldly modeled sculptures which were a very personal interpretation of nature.
Over the last twenty years Geoffrey's sculpture has won many awards, including best sculpture at the Society of Wildlife Artists, three years running and also first prize for sculpture at the International Festival de L'Art Animalier, Loire Valley, France. Many of his models have been selected by the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Museum for exhibition in their annual shows. Geoffrey’s sculpture was the subject of a major retrospective exhibition held at the Nature in Art Museum in Gloucestershire, England, the first living artist the museum accorded with such an honour. His lifesize and monumental works have been a particular success at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition for many years.