Forma:: form, shape & beauty, Claire Duncan and Christian Burchard. With a reverence for nature’s own innate beauty, these artists have masterfully refined work that both respects and responds to what nature offers.

Christian Burchard works exclusively with Madrone burl. Beginning each piece while wet, he shapes it freehand with a chainsaw, bandsaw or sawmill then lets the piece dry. As the moisture leaves the wood it begins to contract, transforming into elegant, often surprising forms. From this form Burchard brings his own hand back into the piece, sandblasting, bleaching and burning the surface to reveal the detail and expressiveness of the wood. He may burn or carve marks into the surface, resembling tattoos or writing. The result is a balance of control and freedom; a collaboration between artist and material.

Claire Duncan combines a professional designer’s understanding of visual vocabulary with an artist’s passion for the painting process. Painting in acrylic on hand-crafted Baltic birch, her work owes a great debt to her previous design career. Her paintings carry an abstract edge to their representation.

Claire has always loved birds for their presence, their power and their grace. Her bird paintings often create a sense of empathy and emotion in the viewer, a sense of participation in the world of the creature. Informed by a love of the natural world coupled with the more formal concerns of design and color her work evokes the solitary experience of beauty.