Hitting Home

Adrian Pynenburg is a contemporary sculptor living in Brantford, Ontario. His organic and rhythmic sculptures pay homage to his diversified skills developed growing up on a dairy farm, training in woodworking and a career that spanned from building custom homes to retail design and marketing.

Always curious and energetic he is a firm believer in life-long learning and has combined his passion for working with wood, architecture and design into his sculptures. As a fine woodworker Adrian brings the mastery of furniture making and sculpture together. His work appears to defy gravity and nature by transforming wood into undulating forms that advance and recede. Some pieces explore harmony and others tension. What he enjoys the most is forming and bending wood to reinterpret what is possible and in doing so engage the viewer.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I have always had a connection with wood, from my childhood days exploring the back woods of our farm to making furniture and building homes. Trees, during the winter and spring seasons have always felt like sculptures on the landscape. What truly interests me is to explore the possibilities of bending and forming wood to express movement and character, testing its limits in novel ways, at times injecting a sense of humor. In addition, I look for ways to combine wood forms with old tools. I’m particularly interested in hammers as they represent the oldest of tools. I began collecting hammers over twenty years ago, fascinated by the dramatically different forms it adopts, depending on the intended application. I look to reimagine the hammer beyond its intended use, inviting viewers to see it as a metaphor. As such my work references wide-ranging topics around the human condition: power, struggle, balance, persuasion, focus, fragility and self-inflicted wounds.