Artist's Statement
Book Forms
I am an artist who lives and works in London working mainly from my Studio at Euroart Studios in Tottenham. I was trained initially as a carver at City and Guilds Art School in the 80’s and then studied Sculpture at Sir John Cass College where I discovered oxyacetylene welding. In 1994 I graduated from Central St Martin’s with a BA with first class honours in Fine Art
Having spent years working as a wood and stone carver and then developing my practice into construction and installation, I decided to return to my earlier love of working in metal. My current work was inspired initially by a fascination with the structures produced on tree trunks where they had been wounded by the lopping of branches. After drawing them repeatedly and making prints inspired by the forms I saw, I found these forms and textures creeping into my metal work.
The work in metal consists of pairs of mild steel plaques, most of them with highly textured surfaces, and some with additions of other materials, mainly copper or strips of leather. Some of them are suspended in pairs from a Perspex frame. They are designed to be seen from more than one viewpoint, but usually incorporate one plate into which a slash has been cut, through which the texture of the second plate can be viewed. Others I call Bookforms. Here the two plates are hinged, reminiscent of a book cover and the structure is intended to allude to the book as a place that encloses a secret, personal world.
All the recent work in metal: the hanging pieces, suspended against a wall or free standing, and the book forms with their slashed central forms, spring from my preoccupation with the original scar image. I have gradually become aware that the structure is a vesica piscis or mandorIa, the form created at the centre of two intersecting circles. Historically it has been imbued with mystical associations, being seen as a sacred form in itself within pagan religions, especially those venerating the Goddess. For many, the associations are frankly sexual and the form regarded as yonic and in my pieces the labial forms and the enriched, encrusted surfaces openly celebrate female sexual energy.
I have been delighted to discover the symbolisms of the Mandorla, which range from architectural to numerological and spiritual, their added layers of meaning giving richness to the imagery. But first and foremost it is the work itself that should please and fascinate as the viewer is drawn by the richness of the surfaces and then enticed to look into and through the slit into the heart of the piece.
Having spent years working as a wood and stone carver and then developing my practice into construction and installation, I decided to return to my earlier love of working in metal. My current work was inspired initially by a fascination with the structures produced on tree trunks where they had been wounded by the lopping of branches. After drawing them repeatedly and making prints inspired by the forms I saw, I found these forms and textures creeping into my metal work.
The work in metal consists of pairs of mild steel plaques, most of them with highly textured surfaces, and some with additions of other materials, mainly copper or strips of leather. Some of them are suspended in pairs from a Perspex frame. They are designed to be seen from more than one viewpoint, but usually incorporate one plate into which a slash has been cut, through which the texture of the second plate can be viewed. Others I call Bookforms. Here the two plates are hinged, reminiscent of a book cover and the structure is intended to allude to the book as a place that encloses a secret, personal world.
All the recent work in metal: the hanging pieces, suspended against a wall or free standing, and the book forms with their slashed central forms, spring from my preoccupation with the original scar image. I have gradually become aware that the structure is a vesica piscis or mandorIa, the form created at the centre of two intersecting circles. Historically it has been imbued with mystical associations, being seen as a sacred form in itself within pagan religions, especially those venerating the Goddess. For many, the associations are frankly sexual and the form regarded as yonic and in my pieces the labial forms and the enriched, encrusted surfaces openly celebrate female sexual energy.
I have been delighted to discover the symbolisms of the Mandorla, which range from architectural to numerological and spiritual, their added layers of meaning giving richness to the imagery. But first and foremost it is the work itself that should please and fascinate as the viewer is drawn by the richness of the surfaces and then enticed to look into and through the slit into the heart of the piece.