Still Life with Tenon Saw, 1985
Varnished Steel, 20" x 28" x 14"
Hand Tools, 1982
Etching, 24 3/4" x 36"
Cut, 1986
Polished Steel, 25" x 48" x 21"
Workbench w/Tinsnips, 1985
Monoprint, 47" x 33"
Christopher Plowman was born in Hampshire, England, in 1952 and died in 2009. He received a diploma in art and design from Wolverhampton Polytechnic in Wolverhampton, England, in 1973, and an M.A. from the Royal College of Art, London, in 1976. His work has been exhibited in Europe and the United States and is in the collections of the Tate Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the Arts Council of Great Britain, and the New York Public Library. He has taught in Britain and at the University of Houston. Plowman works in a variety of media, including sculpture, drawing, and printmaking. In the 1980s he produced an extensive series of still life sculptures and prints about tools. In many of the prints, Plowman uses the objects to define the pictorial space, filling the compositions so that the image expands visually into the viewer's space, calling to mind a jumble of tools in an overflowing toolbox.
*Excerpted from Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.