KENNETH WEBB | Danse
Oil and Acrylic on Canvas
101 x 76 cms / 40 x 30 inches
Signed Webb (lower right)
Inspired by years spent near ancient peat bogs, Kenneth Webb's Danse unites three sculptural pieces of bog oak - semi-fossilised wood preserved for millennia in acidic, low-oxygen earth. Resonating with strength and movement, these forms are reminiscent of the vitality of living trees. In Danse, they appear poised in rhythmic harmony, like dancers in a primordial ballet, continuing Webb’s rare and poetic exploration of nature’s deep memory.
Kenneth has long been captivated by the ancient fragments of ‘bog oak’ - semi-fossilised oak branches that have lain preserved in low-oxygen, acidic conditions for thousands of years. Unearthed from the peatlands that surround his studio and garden in the wilds of Connemara on the western coast of Ireland, these gnarled forms of wood shaped by time, pressure, and the still silence of the bog, continue to inspire Kenneth today.
They are beautifully sculptural, full of vigour and movement and, seemingly, the strength of a living oak. Their dynamic nature has sat in a corner of Kenneth’s heart for decades and blossoms from time to time through his Bog Oak Series. Here, Kenneth transforms these sculptural forms into a powerful visual metaphor.
The painting is rich with energy; strokes of white, indigo and yellow illuminate the figurative-like structures as if lit from within, while the vibrant ground, alive with deep greens, blood reds and cobalt blues offers a theatrical backdrop to their performance. Kenneth transforms these fossils into animated spirits, captured in a kind of resurrection. Kenneth speaks of these bog oaks as having vigour, as though the strength of a living oak remains suspended within them, and in Danse, he paints that vitality into being.
The branches twist and bow like dancers mid-pose, evoking a forgotten ritual or ancestral ceremony. Their grace is haunting, their presence uncanny. For Kenneth, this is not a depiction of decay, but of transcendence. Through colour, texture and gesture, he breathes new life into forms that once lay hidden beneath the peat for centuries. The forms carry with them the weight of time, history, and myth, resurrected here with both reverence and imaginative force. In Danse, Kenneth reminds us that the land holds memory in its soil and that even the most ancient fragments can rise again, animated not only by imagination but by the enduring rhythms of nature itself.
