Victor Harley
After National Service, started by studying Theology Victor became an overland guide travelling southern Africa for 3 years. He studied Nature Conservation in Cape Town and then left for Namibia to manage private reserves. He then came back to Pretoria to complete a Masters in Conservation before moving to Cape Town to lecture in Ecology and Conservation. Currently he am a full time knifemaker, artist and environmental consultant. Still lecturing part time for Nature Conservation and Game Ranch Management.
Below is an extract of the opening speech of a previous exhibition, October 2008 (by Elodie Hainard, granddaughter of the well know Swiss artist, Hainard)
“Not surprisingly, those passions of Victor are the main subjects of the works you can see in his exhibition. When one looks at his sculptures, for example, and the material he uses, one can see the relationship between all these themes. Victor uses bones, clay, glass, wood and steel, reminding us that steel, even though made and shaped by man, still originates from nature. These sculptures then exemplify Victor’s vision, that is, that we are unfortunately busy separating ourselves from nature, but we still remain biologically bound to it.
My grandfather, who was a wildlife painter, used to call what he did “Hunt or hunting with a pencilâ€. Victor, I think, does exactly this. He manages to capture the soul, the essence of these animals or human beings, or landscapes, and renders it in bright, beautiful colours on the canvas, or in flowing shapes in his sculptures. Moreover, Victor’s ‘victims’ survive their encounter with this different type of ‘hunter’, which is something, I am sure, they are grateful for, and which shows another aspect of Victor’s work, that is, this sense of respect between the artist and his subject.
Victor is also a very dedicated, patient person, something that comes out in his amazingly, painstakingly precise and delicate technique in his handmade knives and lino prints. But these still retain a vibrancy, a life, that distinguishes them from the usual glassy-eyed wildlife paintings one usually finds in hotel rooms and guesthouses in this country.â€
