Keith Plumley (1955-2022)

May 24

“I chose the adventure art is because I couldn’t see an end to it; that it is an infinite learning experience. I feel I’m constantly at the starting point and that I’ve only just begun. Wood burls, the knotty growth on trees, fascinate me. I’ve used locally sourced and salvaged wood for my work for the past 2 decades in this town. I love to collaborate with other creative people. The best is yet to come!”

Born in Ontario, Keith made the move to the wilderness frontier that is the west coast to continue his love of art and to explore his own essence within the sea, the air, and the deeply forested land that offers its bounty of inspirational wood burls, which he gathers to create his masterpieces of expression. He arrived with his antique lathe originally used at a sawmill in the 1930s. He first began visiting Tofino in the 1970s and relocated here permanently in the ’90s. A true frontiersman who lives in his self built, off-the-grid home in the woods within the Clayoquot region, Keith creates works that have been displayed in many prestigious settings and purchased by astute collectors across the globe. “Go big or go home” was a well-used dictum of one of Keith’s favourite teachers and the only thing dictating the size of Keith’s artistic pieces is the size of the burl that inspires them.

Keith usually chooses burls to work with. Burls are knotty growths that grow on the sides of trees. They are not used in the lumber industry so they are cut off the trees were they are cut down and left behind, usually in very inaccessible areas. Keith has found burls eight feet across from trees that must have been several hundred years old. Burls often contain swirling grains, sometimes “birds-eye” markings, and often “light rays”, a stretchmark that catches the light in a shifting, iridescent way.

Keith makes bowls, platters, and art pieces of all shapes and sizes but he is most known for his very large pieces. Large feast platters and bowls of Keith’s are suitable for buffets at private businesses, galleries, and homes. He usually works with red and yellow cedar, sometimes maple, hemlock, spruce or pine.

Some pieces are symmetrically turned on the lathe and some pieces have the bark and natural edges and shapes of the burl.

Keith has been creating art from his private studio, a hidden gem tucked away in Live to Surf Plaza, for over 25 years.

Source: Bio.