CONTEMPORARY SCULPTURE ARTIST
INSPIRATION
Contemplative sculptures that rekindle a sense of connection and enchantment with nature and the landscape.
INSPIRATION
I’m often asked these days where I get my inspiration from and its not an easy question to answer. Sometimes when a sculpture is finished I can look back at it myself and ask “Where on earth did that come from?”.
Making sculptures is my way of giving form to my inner world. Inspired by years of meditation, combined with the healing and restorative powers of connecting to nature.
I sculpt the feeling of being alive in the moment, of seeing the rising sun, the bird flying overhead or a wild flower on a cliff top.
For me, inspiration is not like a light bulb that suddenly goes on and off. It works more like a slowly evolving dance or a piece of music, where different elements join the dance or add a note, creating harmonies over time.
I feel my challenge is to listen to the different elements that are whispering inside me, and to give them shape and form. I don’t always understand it with my mind, but that is the mystery of art, the beauty of art. I just know when it feels right, it gives me a sense of meaning and wholeness.
So although I don’t always know why I’m doing something I always know when it feels right.
“I sculpt the feeling of being alive in the moment, of seeing the rising sun, the bird flying overhead or a wild flower on a cliff top.”
When I look back on my life, I can see that certain elements were already forming in my childhood and perhaps they help explain why I do what I do.
For example, one of the themes that regularly appears in my work is figures with birds. Some reasons why I’m drawn to birds are clear, but others are more mysterious.
I remember as a teenager being mesmerised standing in front of a painting by the early renaissance painter Piero della Francesco.
The painting was ‘The baptism of Christ’, where John the Baptist is pouring water on the head of Jesus.
A dove, frozen for a moment in time is hovering above the head of Jesus.
It’s an unusual painting to be so captured by as a teenager, but there was something about it that resonated strongly with me.
The bird with the figures in a landscape has a sense of a magical, spiritual moment.
There is a simplicity and a profoundness about the painting, which is something that still resonates with me and my work today.
Another connection is with my Father who was a keen birder who would net and ring birds.
As a child I loved going with him and I remember vividly, watching him as he carefully and delicately took birds from the net before recording and ringing them. When he was finished, he would let me hold the tiny delicate birds in my hands. I would then open my hands and allow this tiny creature to fly, with all its might, out of my hands into the big open sky. I can still feel today the thrill of opening my hands and letting those birds fly free.
I’m sure that feeling is one of the reasons why birds are so meaningful to me in my work today.
So inspiration is multilayered and sometimes mysterious, but in the end I come to the conclusion that this is just who I am and sculpting is what I’m meant to do.
Sometimes I simply refer to them as my little prayers of thankfulness.
