Jon Buck (b.1951)
"Dancing to Time"
Signed and numbered 2/10, enamelled bronze, 53cm high

Exhibited: Jon Buck, "Without Words", Gallery Pangolin, London, 9 June - 18 July 2014

Born in 1950, Jon Buck studied at Nottingham and Manchester Art Schools. By 1983 he had become both a Fellow in Sculpture at Cheltenham Art College and the first member of Thamesdown Borough Council as an artist. He is also a member of the Royal West of England Academy, and his work is regularly exhibited in both private and public collections including Gallery Pangolin, London. Jon Buck’s works are considered forms of visual poetry, described as “songs without words” intended to capture both the feeling of elation and the resilience of the human spirit. Buck’s works titled “Without Words” were created in response to a poem “Everyone Sang” by the anti-war poet Siegfried Sassoon:

“Everyone suddenly burst out singing;

And I was filled with such delight

As prisoned birds must find in freedom,

Winging wildly across the white

Orchards and dark-green fields; on-on and out of sight

Everyone voice suddenly lifted;

And the beauty came like a setting sun:

My heart was shaken with tear; and horror

Drifted away … O, but Everyone

Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.”

Buck said that Sassoon’s words resonated with him, expressing “what it is to be free and alive.” For him, “it is the end of the poem that is most crucial: it becomes a timeless declaration of the resilience of the human spirit – feelings beyond words”, a sentiment that inspires his recent works.