Stephen Coburn

Hunter Valley Sun, 2006 - steel, painted & waxed, 520 x 176 x 20cm
This sculpture is about the ebb and flow of chaotic river life, where space and steel mingle and merge, and split again, unique; in one moment the sun, the next, flowing water; void resolving itself into substance and back again; a formless end, an end in search of form.

My introduction to Art came very easily. In fact I think I was already familiar with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons before I was born as my father played it continuously as he painted. The smell of oil paint and mineral turpentine was the natural smell of our home. I used to play at my mother’s feet as she made sculpture on the kitchen table. Old cans of drying oil paint were the subject of my first chemistry experiments. The exhibition opening was a fearsome event for me as a small child, to be dragged by the hand through a forest of legs, to be stepped on, patted on the head or worse, ignored for what seemed an unbearably long time, as my mother and father talked on oblivious to my boredom and discomfort. Tony Tuckson used to scare me as he had a beard growing out of his neck in the same fashion as the Giant in my book, Jack & the Beanstalk. I used to hide behind my mothers’ skirt and avoid his pats on the head in case he scooped me up into his pocket for a tasty snack later.