Paula Swinnen (Brussels, 1964), Vine Table

Large, excep­tion­al vine table exe­cut­ed in pati­nat­ed and pol­ished bronze, rich­ly dec­o­rat­ed with vine leaves and grapes.

Both the table legs and the branch­ing exten­sions of the table are craft­ed from bronze in the form of gnarled vines and pati­nat­ed in a shim­mer­ing brown that appears strik­ing­ly life­like. Each of the count­less shoots, vine leaves, and clus­ters with their ripe grapes is indi­vid­u­al­ly made, and with their beau­ti­ful gold­en hue, they per­fect­ly com­ple­ment the light brown pati­na of the vines.

The table is signed and dat­ed sev­er­al times: SWIN­NEN 2020 / 2021 EA.

Each object is a unique piece cre­at­ed by the artist.

Paula Swin­nen, Brus­sels 1964:

Paula Swin­nen stud­ied at the Acad­e­my of Fine Arts in Brus­sels, where she dis­cov­ered her true pas­sion: ​“draw­ing in bronze.” Twen­ty years lat­er, the self-taught sculp­tor mas­tered every step of bronze cast­ing, from cast­ing to pati­na­tion. The ancient lost-wax tech­nique she uses allows her to cap­ture exquis­ite detail.

Dri­ven by her pas­sion for art, Paula began study­ing draw­ing at the age of 14 at the Brus­sels Acad­e­my of Fine Arts while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly attend­ing evening class­es at the Académie d’Ixelles. She soon real­ized that her true inter­est lay in ​“draw­ing with bronze.” As a self-taught explor­er of sculp­ture, she ven­tured into the world of bronze art using the lost-wax tech­nique. For more than 25 years now, Paula Swin­nen has been a ful­ly accom­plished ani­mal sculp­tor, mas­ter­ing all phas­es of the cre­ative process, from cast­ing to the devel­op­ment of the pati­na. Instead of depict­ing ani­mals as they are, she shapes her works by trans­fer­ring their per­son­al­i­ty into their nat­ur­al move­ments — some­thing she accom­plish­es with wild ani­mals. Paula’s work con­veys a very real­is­tic inter­pre­ta­tion of the fau­na, through which one feels the pow­er­ful expres­sion of the ani­mal world and the pulse of nature. Her vision as a sculp­tor mate­ri­al­izes in life-sized bronze cre­ations of ani­mals in very nat­ur­al positions.

She began sculpt­ing mon­keys and some orang­utans, fol­lowed by a moun­tain goril­la for the WWF. She even cre­at­ed a life-size drom­e­dary and sev­er­al larg­er-than-life pieces. In recent years, she has also designed fur­ni­ture, as well as cus­tom-made cof­fee tables and con­soles, which are an ode to nature. Paula strives to cre­ate her own bes­tiary, which serves as an inex­haustible source of inspiration.