“My interest in the natural world is the primary force driving my work. I choose to work principally in wood and stone, using hand tools and traditional methods. My aim is to capture the essence of the subject through expression and movement in a realistic form, but one that is sculpture, not a mannequin.”
Biography
Nick Lamb trained as a graphic designer at the Berkshire College of Art in his native England. In 1973 he started woodcarving as a hobby. By the early 1980s he had won several woodcarving prizes.
He carved his first netsuke (a toggle worn with traditional Japanese clothing) in 1983. Since then, he has become one of the most celebrated of the non-Japanese carvers of netsuke and other traditional Japanese miniature forms.
Lamb’s work has been collected and exhibited internationally by such institutions as the British Museum, London; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University; the Kyoto Seishu Netsuke Art Museum, Kyoto, Japan; the Museum of East Asian Art, Berlin; the Tokyo National Museum; the Chiba City Museum of Art, Japan; and the Museum of Art & Design, New York City.
In the late 1990s, Lamb began to sculpt on a larger scale as well as continuing with the miniature work, creating wood and stone sculptures and bronzes. His works on paper include graphite drawings, ink drawings, and etchings. Lamb is a member of the National Sculpture Society. He has lived in the U.S. since 1995.
