Richard John Forbes is an internationally-known multi-disciplinary artist with a central focus on sculpture. He likes to call himself a carver and tells me that his body is like a map of his art.

His fingers and hands are those of a working man, the aches in his arms testament to his very raison d'etre. “This hard physical work is like a drug, endorphins maybe, a spiritual euphoria that comes through working with my hands.” I don’t go to gym, I’ve got sculptures to make,” says the prolific South African sculptor and artist.

Forbes is unique in that he has the unique ability to use natural materials from wood to iron to stone and any other discarded matter that spark his curiosity which he then fashions into thought-provoking sculptures from small rose quartz pieces to massive garden and land art. He has also made his mark on the planet as a versatile artist who has pretty much put his hand to the gamut of his profession from restoring buildings, to drawing, print, to film and even making theatre sets.

His work is simultaneously subtle and yet bold; grounded and ethereal, ancient and yet modern. The one constant theme though is the reverence and passion Forbes has for exploring various materials with ‘his hands letting that object of nature guide him,’ he says. He says that he respects and honours rose quartz, but is in love with marble.

Forbes is now settled in his studio, a converted heritage barn near the Outeniqua mountains in George, but he has travelled extensively throughout his life.

He has had some 55 collaborative exhibits throughout the world and 20 solo exhibitions. His work, diverse pieces ranging from small to large in various mediums, live in private collections in South Africa, UK, Australia, Holland and America.

The original Woolworths family have some as does Spier Wine Estate and an Israeli art dealer has his largest work yet, says Forbes. His work Dark Codex is a huge piece of carved steel that looks to me almost like a honeycomb. It stands proud at the Norval Foundation, an art museum and sculpture garden situated in Cape Town. He says like all artists he ‘befriends paupers and princes.’

Forbes is prolific so choosing what pieces of his art to home in on, is a challenge. His installation, Black Room in Richmond, Northern Cape, is an immersive encounter worth experiencing with a large black sculpture suspended in the dark vaulted space of a corner store.

“It’s an ode to darkness, an occlusion, a way of discovering art as a feeling, as a sensation. It explores volume, form, mass and spatial relationships, gravity and tension,” he explains.

NIROX Sculpture Park, at Cradle of Mankind in Gauteng, hosts more than 50 permanent and long-term installations by artists from across the globe and has at least one annual large-scale curated exhibition of new and temporary installations and performances.  It is home to Synesthesia of Water a monumental land intervention sculpture that Forbes created to explore our relationship with the natural energy and the power of the earth, in this case, water.  

It was during a residency at NIROX in 2023 that Forbes`s exhibition Praxis came about and some of these Kalahari-harvested rose quartz pieces are now on exhibit at Knysna Fine Art during February 2025.

These rose quartz sculptures have intriguing names like Cloud Fossil, Cosmos Venus, De Eike and Lepidoptera (the name of a butterfly) – and are open to personal interpretation. I don’t see a butterfly in Lepidoptera, but I do get a sense of something exquisite and fragile.

Forbes has been invited to lecture at the Pretoria University, SA and has been a guest speaker at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, USA.

The pathway to now

Forbes describes his years at school of being a ‘distracted student’. He had no interest in most of the school subjects, he says. He did, however, follow his inner voice and completed high school at the National School Of The Arts in Johannesburg.

He says the art-seed was probably planted as a child because he remembers his father building model boats, planes and trains. “I was intrigued by this voyage of discovery that started from scratch and became something,” he says.

In 1991 he did an apprenticeship with Guy Du Toit, one of South Africa's most accomplished sculptors,   at his bronze foundry in Pretoria.

Then he set off to explore the world, intent on resisting military conscription.

At that point he knew what kind of art he would pursue. “Painting never really worked for me. It felt like an illusion whereas sculpting, carving is real. I like to feel that I leave something tangible in the world and sculpture eloquently achieves this. Painting is like laying a piece of my mind bare – and I was never brave enough to paint the darkness in me,” is how Forbes explains it.

For the better part of the 1990’s Forbes roamed Portugal and the UK and while he tried to pursue an artistic career, he needed to earn a living. This he did by restoring structural heritage buildings. At the age of 26 in 1996 he served an apprenticeship as an English Heritage Architectural Stone Restorer under master Paul Carter at David Ball Restoration Ltd in the UK.

He became a sought-after and specialised artisan in this field and art took a background. Some of the iconic restorations he did was on Wellington Arch, Hyde Park Corner; The Royal Institute of Architects building, Westminster; The House of Parliament member’s tunnel, Westminster; St. Luke’s Church, Liverpool street; Mill Hill Private School; Dreadnought Mariner’s Hospital, the Queen’s House, Greenwich; The Tate Gallery, Victoria; Nunhead Cemetery, a chapel and notable mausoleums in Southeast London.

His first actual art exhibition was in London in 1997 in his warehouse studio, showing works made from wood ‘combed and scavenged from the parks in South East London .’

“On returning to South Africa in the early part of 2000 I had made a conscious decision to become a full-time artist, and after careful analysis of the skills I had gained as well as the knowledge and international experience I had received, I knew I was in the right creative emotional and intellectual space to commit entirely to this path,” he says.

His first solo show in Johannesburg filled Godart Gallery with a body of work called Attitudes. “By this time, I had become fascinated by interactive artwork that would bring people into a physically engaging situation with the artwork. The Attitudes are wooden sculptures fixed into a round-bottomed base.

“The physical kinetics of these sculptures challenged people’s sense of space and safety, and generally caused them to feel child-like and surrounded with the elements of fun,” says Forbes.

It was around this time he was commissioned by famous South African artist William Kentridge to help him with four large bronze sculptures for the Western Australian Museum of Art. They worked together for the next four years. Some of these works included travelling models for The Magic Flute opera and a series of small bronze and wooden horses for The Nose opera

In 2007, Forbes came up with the idea of turning huge dead trees into public works. ABSA Bank were willing participants and sponsors of The Burghers of Prince Albert which stands massive and proud on Church Street (Main Street) of Prince Albert in the Klein Karoo. This project was the beginning of future large-scale endeavours.

From the middle of 2008 into 2009 Forbes embarked on a sequence of public works. These include Aqua and H20, two large scale, 3m-high wooden sculptures housed at Johannesburg Water and a series of smaller works owned by Johannesburg Art Bank. The Johannesburg Development Agency commissioned him to do two public monuments for the Berea Park. Elevator is a stainless steel symbol of aspiration standing 6m-high above Joe Slovo Drive in Berea Park while Courage is another stainless steel, fearless young girl 6m-high walking on stilts.

His work, small and large, elicits human emotion, which is the way Forbes wants it. It can be a sense of humour or of darkness, of hope, but a thread I feel strongly is resilience, perhaps ode to the natural materials he uses and treats with such respect.

Behind the art

Forbes genuinely seems to like people, the connection with the buyer he tells me. He willingly goes to their homes to help choose the space for art and he says he loves people visiting his studio.

As he has got older, he tells me he is much faster in the way he works. “I have learnt to get my thoughts out of the way and trust my muscle memory and observation to express what needs to come out in the work.”

Forbes has a penchant for words. He writes thoughts, words all over the walls of his studio. These could well become names for pieces of work like the word Lepidoptera which inspired him to model one of his current rose quart pieces into a butterfly.

His favourite book would be Edmund De Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance (2010) which is a family memoir by British ceramicist Edmund de Waal. This book’s reference to Netsuke figurines (a small, ornamental sculpture that originated in Japan in the 17th century) was pivotal in the creation of his rose quartz body of work; emphasising the rare and precious nature of small intimate sculpture.

Best movie, if he is in a good mood, is The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Forbes is not a sporty person, but he does enjoy swimming, gardening and cooking.

“I make a mean paella; both the mountain version with rabbit, artichoke and wild mushrooms which must be done over a fire, but also my wife Kate’s favourite, the seafood version.”

The one piece of art he would own if space and money were not issues would be a piece from sculptor Isamu Noguchi, an American artist, furniture designer and landscape architect whose important career spanned six decades from the 1920s.

Favourites from his own works? “Many, many pieces all over the world but the one that stands out to me is Spire – a petroglyph (carving or etching into a rock surface) from rare South African marble (it is part of a private collection).  

“Then there’s an important piece of work in a private collection called Vault which is the entrance wall and doors to the King Suite of the Michelangelo Towers Hotel in Johannesburg. This piece took 18 months to complete and was fashioned from rare African hard woods and weighs 4.8 tons (2008).

Forbes’s bio and list of exhibits reads like War and Peace, there is much that he has accomplished. Read the full bio on the Knysna Fine Art website.

This month, from February 8, his work goes on show at Knysna Fine Art in a collaboration with renown sculptor Wilma Cruise. The exhibit is named Scorched Earth – A Conversation. What links the artists in this exhibit is a concern for the environment and the fact that the earth has been scorched by human hubris and greed. Both their works were subjected to fire, the lick of open flames, whether to vitrify the clay, temper the steel or melt igneous rock to the state of glass. Forbes’ work holds the spark of abstract expressionism, while Cruise’s work holds the torch to figurative expressionism (20th century art movements that had specific ideologies).

Richard John Forbes in his happy place surrounded by rose quartz pieces. Photo: Anthea Pokroy