About Ken Martin
How Ken Martin carved out a life as a sculptor
Ken Martin never went to art school. Ken was a shearer. A good one. He could knock over 150 sheep in a day, and, in a good year, he and his shearing partner could strip the fleece from more than 40,000 animals. At the end of a backbreaking day he would retire to his spartan shearers’ quarters, with no TV or even a radio, and he’d draw to pass the time. This was Ken’s art school — the isolated sheep farms of South Australia’s upper South-East. You can see it in his work, informed by the Australian bush and the people who live in it.
Now one of the country’s most sought-after sculptors, Martin has, through hard work and raw talent, risen from a bloke carving in his back shed to make ends meet, to the artist charged with immortalising some of our sporting greats in bronze.
Barrie Robran, Jason Gillespie and Darren Lehmann at Adelaide Oval, and the full scale sculpture of three-time Melbourne Cup winner Makybe Diva on the Port Lincoln foreshore are all his. Not bad for a kid who left home and school at age 14.
“Figurative sculpture has been a constant in my repertoire for 43 years and its possibilities in a contemporary context continue to excite me. Capturing the essence of an individual’s character in a sculptural portrait is both a journey I relish and a major part of my life’s work”
—KEN MARTIN
His night time drawing evolved into sculpting, first with stone and then with wood. Ken’s first chance to turn his art into a career came when he teamed up with master craftsmen Bernie Koker and Malcolm Averill with the aim of establishing a furniture factory in, of all places, the Eyre Peninsula town of Port Lincoln of which he still calls home today. His furniture business ‘Constantia Furniture’ was a hit, and it put Ken — who carved all the intricate detail — and his fellow craftsmen on the map.
It was years later when Ken, with the support of his loving wife Elisa, chose to go sculpting full time. Martin started carving his intricately detailed wood pieces from his humble back-shed studio, and word began to spread that there was an artist in Port Lincoln doing world-class work. Such world-class that Ken even started receiving international interest.
Martin eventually moved away from wood, due partly to potential health hazards in the dust he was creating…
“A lot of the rare exotics have toxins in the timber to protect them from parasites, and when you carve them you release that in the dust, Ivory wood from the Clarence River, for example, if you’re careless with that you’ll end up with a severe earache for two hours. It is also true that moving to a different medium opens other creative opportunities” - Ken Martin
Ken moved into bronze, then landed the commission that would change everything — a life-size portrait of three-times Melbourne Cup winner Makybe Diva to stand proudly on the foreshore at Port Lincoln, the home town of the horse’s owner and local tuna baron Tony Santic as well as now Kens. Makybe Diva helped to establish Ken as an exceptional competitor in the field of public sculpture which has since led him on many wonderful paths including the Adelaide Oval sculptural series.
Years on and Ken Martin is still that outback loving, small town kid who relishes in trips away to the Australia outback and deserts to reconnect with his roots and recharge his creative batteries. Its this humble beginnings and appreciation for nature and it’s living creatures that has empowered Ken to develop a unique skillset; that of a deep understanding and appreciation of anatomy paired with an innate capacity to capture the spirit of the subject. It is this combination of skills that results in a powerful artwork that will delight and memorialise greatness for generations to come.
“There is a satisfaction in doing big public sculpture, but there’s also a lot of responsibility. It could be around for hundreds of years, so you don’t want to make a mistake. I feel privileged to do it.”
—KEN MARTIN