Heather Jansch was a renowned British sculptor whose lifelong passion was to achieve mastery of the equine form.
“Heather is a genius with an eye for nature that in another generation would have seen her burnt as a witch; now she is rightly considered one of our country’s finest artists. If you were to ask the visitors to Eden, ‘What is your favourite work here?’ it would be the horse, and we gave the entrance to our kingdom to this horse. Richard III, see it and weep.” ─Tim Smit, KBE., Founder of the Eden Project, UK
Her pioneering use of driftwood as a medium was frequently copied, but rarely rivalled.
Jansch spent many years perfecting the complex translation of her original driftwood works into bronze, establishing a technique that often made them indistinguishable from the original.
Her work is held in collections across the world. (1948 – 2021)
Discovering Figurative Art
Heather Jansch was a sculptor who specialised in equine figures in driftwood and bronze. She died in July 2021 at the age of 72.
From an early age she was inspired by the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci and her lifelong passion for horses ran parallel; her childhood sketchbooks were crammed with studies of ponies. She studied fine art at Walthamstow Technical College and at Goldsmiths, University of London.

View Heather Jansch Sculpture
Born Heather Sewell, she married the renowned folk musician, Bert Jansch, in 1968 and they moved to a remote hill farm in Wales where Heather bred Welsh Cobs. During this period, which she described as her apprenticeship, Heather developed a profound understanding of equine behaviour and anatomy. She also became skilled at understanding the minute differences between closely related breeds. Her command and accuracy were fast noted by breeders, with whom her early traditional equine portraits in oils became much in demand.
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