Wild Boar Sculpture

Throughout my life I have pursued my twin loves of natural and ancient history, and spent my teens shuttling between the Museums of Anthropology, Archaeology and Zoology in Cambridge. My natural history sculptures focus primarily on endangered British animals, and those that have made a comeback. After more than 30 years as a ceramicist I am now moving permanently into foundry bronze. This harder and more resilient material liberates the form from gravity and so widens my creative horizons. By exploring the chemistry of bronze patination, I can also achieve all the colour possibilities previously only available in ceramics. One of my sculptures, Hypnia, was inspired by the bronze head of Hypnos the Greek God of sleep in the British Museum, with my larger version sculpted in clay, and then via 3D printing, reduced down, coming full circle back to a life sized bronze. Predominantly my foundry bronzes are an exploration of British and European wildlife. My Buzzard and Red Kite sculptures are of life sized female birds to help the viewer appreciate the scale and presence of the real animal. My present projects are of a mantling Barn Owl, a Kingfisher in a threat display, a stretching, yawning fox and a twisting Badger, working alongside the Barn Owl Trust, the Badger Trust, Wildlife Rescue centres and the League Against Cruel Sports. Presently, I am working on a Badger Trophic Cascade, an ambitious project which describes in 3D what happens to the wider ecosystem after widespread badger culling, and will use the life sized twisting badger as its base, the species you loose flooding out of its back in a big spiral tide, and the two species that increase rising up out of the badgers shoulders. I exhibit regularly in the South East and South West including at the British Museum, the Henley Festival, the Natural History Museum Oxford, the Royal Academy of Arts London, the Mall Gallery London and La Galleria in Pall Mall, and have won four awards for my bronzes. Studio Address: The Happy Crab Gallery, 20A Gloucester street, Weymouth, Dorset, DT4 7AW Mobile: 07943 803551