Artists Statement
My work focuses on the human form, exploring the aesthetic and conceptual possibilities that this subject offers. Since travelling to Rome and Florence in my late teenage years, the inspiration to work in a classical style was established and I continue to marvel at the way artists have captured moments in human experience – mood and emotion in inert material. My works explore broader themes as well as more personal, lived experiences, without focusing on too literal or closed meanings, preferring instead that viewers find their own relationship to the works and what they express.
I very much enjoy the process of sculpting in traditional ways, using mallet and chisels, especially in the exquisite Huon pine that I have chosen to use almost exclusively for my timber work. (of course, the use of power tools enables a quicker way forward and these are employed as needed too). Carrara marble, for me the most sublime sculptural material and a later addition to my repertoire, offers even more possibilities of modelling the human form in delightfully detailed and nuanced ways.
I believe that process if really an important part of what I choose to do, where I want the audience to really take in not only the finished work but become aware of the way in which the works might have been made, through the slow and careful process that, in an age of fast-paced and short-lived digital moments, runs counter to this and requires time, patience and resilience.
