ARTIST STATEMENT 2026
I graduated from Wolverhampton College of Art in 1967 having trained in Fashion Design, which was the ‘art of the moment’. However, I was interested in sculpture from an early age and spent many years looking for an opportunity to learn the necessary skills to pursue this aspiration. I was particularly drawn to figurative sculpture, especially portraits that expressed movement and the personality of their subject.
In 1995 I finally had the opportunity to work with Carol Orwin, an inspirational teacher who had done her advanced post graduate training at Central St Martins under Sir Anthony Caro and Phillip King. With Carol I was able to learn not only how to create figurative sculptures and portraits but also how to make moulds in various materials, cast in plaster and bronze resin and to produce finished wax ready for bronze casting. I now generally do all my own mould-making and resin-casting and my moulds are used at the foundry for casting my work in wax for bronze. I find that, because I have a good understanding of all of the processes from conception to final bronze, I am not held back in any way when creating an artwork at the clay stage.
Having come to sculpture late in life, I have spent the last twenty years making up for lost time. My aim is to capture life and movement in all my work and this helped me to become a chosen artist for the 2012 Olympics. I have also been awarded many private commissions for portraits, which has no doubt helped in my being able to secure commissions for public sculptures, often following a competitive selection process. I also enjoy opportunities to give talks about my work, when I not only show examples but also discuss the whole process of producing a sculpture. In this way, I hope to inspire others to take up sculpture.
Although I have specialised mainly in working with clay, I have also created more contemporary work with laser-cut stainless steel, producing much larger pieces within a much smaller budget. In 2021 the1.8 metre figure of two sailors, 1916 uniform on one side and 2016 uniform on other, was set on site for the Woodland Trust Jutland Commemorative Grove in Surrey. Another was ‘Peace and Magna Carta’ for Runnymede Borough Council, a 2.5 metre tall figure in stainless steel with cut–out internal details to give a sense of life and movement. My first stainless steel commission was for 36, double-sided cut-out figures depicting different people of Guildford, fixed along 43 metres of steel railings near the railway station.
2020/2022 was an extremely busy time, working with clay on three large bronze portrait commissions of important female figures. The first to be set on site at the end of March 2021 was the life-size Climate Change Activist Greta Thunberg for Winchester University, which is the greenest University in the country. This portrait was a world first of Greta. On 8th June 2021 the life size seated statue of Suffragette Emily Wilding Davison was unveiled in the centre of Epsom at a live-streamed social media event (covid restrictions). The one-and-quarter life-size standing figure of the composer, writer and Woman’s rights campaigner, Dame Ethel Smyth, for Woking Borough Council, was unveiled on 8th March 2022 at Dukes Court in Woking. I have felt inspired by all three of these females. I researched each one to learn all I could about them, then worked to not only capture each portrait but also to portray their motivations, spirit, personality and to show just enough movement to give the figures a sense of life.
In 2022 I was selected as one of four finalists from a total of over 50 artists to create a quarter size maquette of my design for Aphra Behn, 17th century playwright, poet. pioneer. These maquettes were toured in UK during Summer of 2022 for the public to vote and choose a winner. In November 2022 I was declared winner and in 2023/24 created a life-plus-quarter size portrait figure of Aphra Behn for the centre of Canterbury. This was held in storage for almost a year due to site problems, and was unveiled by Queen Camilla on 27th February 2025.