Desmond Fountain

DESMOND FOUNTAIN — THE INNATE ABILITY THAT WON HIM HIS FIRST ACCLAIM - an award in an adult exhibition at the age of six - has grown in the intervening years into a prodigious talent.

The chronology of Desmond Fountain's successes, especially in recent years, is too numerous to detail here. Suffice it is to say that his work has achieved international stature and is purchased by many notable collectors around the world. His inspired bronze monument, one-and-a-half times life size, of Bermuda's founding father, Sir George Somers, was unveiled by HRH Princess Margaret in 1984, and attracts upward of half-a-million admirers a year; but the majority of Fountain's works enjoy rather more intimate habitats in keeping with their varied scales. He has several major shows in London, and exhibits regularly on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as Bermuda. His specialised knowledge is also sought after as an international consultant.

In 1982 Desmond Fountain founded The Bermuda Fine Art Trust, through which The Bermuda National Gallery was established at City Hall in Hamilton.

In recognition of his achievements, Fountain was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors.

Desmond Fountain's sculptures are cast in limited editions of nine. It is not uncommon that such editions sell out within a week of their release.

The sculptor's early fascination with the human form blossoms at Stoke-on-Trent College of Art in England, and developed at Exeter College of Art, where he majored in sculpture. Even in his student days, Fountain's Life size nude figures on seats attracted British national media attention. His growing reputation was confirmed when, as a post-graduate student at Bristol University, he was commissioned to sculpt a portrait of their Nobel Prize-winner, C.F. Powell. More recently, Fountain's medallion portrait of Princess Margaret was among Britain's selected exhibits in the FIDEM World Congress in the U.S.

While portraiture will always hold an important place for Desmond Fountain, whether on a medallion or as a complete-figure child or adult, his other theme remains the female nude. Although much of his time is now devoted to the completion of his bronzes at various foundries in England and America as well as spending time at his property in France, Fountain continues to make most of the sculptures in their original form at his Bermuda studio.

Frequently questioned about his reasons for continuing to base his main studio in the some-what remote island of Bermuda, Desmond Fountain said the relative isolation had in fact been beneficial. His circumstances have required him to develop innovative techniques with materials. Also, his uncomplicated literal approach to his work has remained uninfluenced by transitory vogues in the art world.

In the same year the exclusive publication Leaders Magazine created "The Desmond Fountain Sculpture Park" at their conference centre in Bath, New York.

Recently he has embarked on a series of water sculptures (fountains!)

All of the bronzes are produced by the ancient process called "Cire Perdu" (lost wax). This is the most expensive and demanding of all casting processes, yet Fountain insists upon it for its unmatched accuracy. The insistence is reflective of what makes Desmond Fountain different. "Exactitude. That is what I seek in the final bronze," he states firmly. And that, judging from the almost unanimous acclaim he receives, is what he gets.

~ Charles Barclay, 1991