About
Oliver Strong

Oliver Strong is a talented British artist that is proud to create by hand, lifesized sculptures of wildlife and contemporary forms in the idyllic countryside of Dorset UK.

Oliver grew up in Africa, and first hand encounters with deer and leopards he says, gave him a healthy respect for, and an affinity with wildlife that often influences his work. He spent almost seven years as a professional yacht skipper and those years of living in close contact with the ocean, have instilled a special love for anything related to the sea that is often reflected in his choice of marine subjects.

It was in the US in 1994, that he first started a thriving business in topiary ‘living sculptures’, a combination of metal sculpture and shrub topiary, moss and ornamental plants to create an array of characters and creatures ranging from cock roosters to dancers.

Oliver Strong built a reputation for his unique and life-like living sculptures and won numerous awards for his innovative sculptural displays at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show in Seattle, which every year would draw an international circle of celebrity gardeners.

He has public sculptures in numerous cities in the United States as well as England. Oliver later returned, to settle in the artistic heart of Dorset.

Oliver regards his years of working in ‘Hortisculpture’ as an intense period of training in three dimensional and physical form which naturally evolved into a career in metal sculpture.

There is no casting involved in my art. I prefer to use sections of sheet bronze, each piece hand wrought over an anvil, a cedar block or even gently over a knee, to form the muscles or curves for the idea in mind. This method ensures that each sculpture is completely unique.

I enjoy the challenge of working with metal, the heating and shaping of a flat piece of bronze into a form of beauty’

A professional artist since 1994, Oliver has a passion and desire that drives him to create.
Oliver now works mainly in bronze and stainless steel, making hand formed sculptures of wildlife and contemporary structures, but still enjoys using plants to enliven and soften his art.

“If I can capture in my art, some of the grace and vitality of my subject,

then I have succeeded.”