Keith Brocklehurst

Foreword by Charles R. Hajdamach

Keith Brocklehurst is the archetypal polymath who turned to glass to best express his observations and comments on our modern times. His work draws inspiration from the wisdom of ancient Earth cultures and he quotes the story that beneath parts of the sacred lands of the Hopi in America and the Aborigine people of Australia, uranium is found and appears in their story telling. Both these ancient cultures warned of dire consequences should it be removed. Inspiration has also come from sources as varied as the New Mexican mesas, visions in the Black Hills of Dakota and a passion for the longbow. Influential theories have included Oriental philosophy, spiritual traditions both East and West, Cosmo grams, geomancy, lay lines and the comparable study of dragon lines in China.

The writings of Keith Critchlow about platonic geometry appeal to him as a key to interpret the visual world. Other favourite authors include C.G.Jung especially ‘The I Ching or Book of Changes’, Helmut Wilhelm, Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes. Colour symbolism of earth, air, fire and water is also of paramount importance. The play of natural forces and a reliance on the countryside and wild landscapes have been an imperceptible but essential presence recurring throughout his work. 

Like many contemporary glass artists Keith came to glass from a totally different background; in his case the training was fine art. At Chelsea School of Art and the Slade School in the 1960s his teachers were John Hoyland and Patrick Caulfield with other influences taken from Gabo, Pevsner and Constructivism. Other work included environments and the manipulation of light through neon, and then as different avenues opened his awareness to new possibilities he created time-based inflatable sculptures and intricate combinations of video, film, movement and participation. But an alienation from galleries and technology led to the exploration of glass as an expressive medium and fulfilled his desire “to become more applied in terms of what I was making”. Consciously rejecting blown glass he concentrated exclusively on kiln-fired glass and cast glass and by 1983 his work was exhibited nationally.

His images of leaping frogs, bounding hares and soaring eagles slot into a universal culture and his evocative sculptures, boxes and bowls would not seem out of place in a museum collection of ethnography. By sheer chance he found that his work had strong echoes in traditions such as Nigerian burial houses which consist of box shapes surrounded by a huge eagle, an exact parallel to his boxes, or certain North American Indian ceremonies which involve rearing a young eagle which becomes the mediator for the whole village.

In the twenty-five years since his first exhibition Keith has been a kind of glass mediator who brings us back in touch with the natural world. His work with its rich seams of meaning and allusion has a human understanding, sensibility and an integrity which will ensure its lasting qualities for generations to come, much like the ancient artefacts and cultures which inspired them.

Charles R. Hajdamach