I graduated from Wimbledon school of art in 1982 since then I have had a studio in S.E London. From 1995 my studio has been at APT in Deptford, where I am a founder member.
My practice is sculpture, I started out carving wood, Elm, Beech, Oak to name a few, I am now back working in wood, carving and sometimes constructing. Between these two spells, I carved stone and worked in clay and plaster. I carved Granite on two symposiums one in Scotland and one in China. I have completed public commissions in stone, some locally Woolwich and Abby Wood and others further afield, in Sao Paolo, Brazil.
I have also completed public commissions in wood. In 2001 I carved and installed a set of steps at Enderby Wharf, East Greenwich. The steps descend in to the Thames and are submerged by the high tide. The wood I used is Opepe, a tropical hard wood. I carved in relief the history of Enderby Wharf.
In 2001 I won a sculpture competition, it was a commission to create a sculpture for Deptford Creek. A requirement was that the sculpture expressed something of the tidal nature of the Creek. I proposed a stone carving of the moon. Due to a lack of funds, it never went ahead, but I carved a small version and went on to carve most of the planets of the Solar System plus a Comet.
For some years I modeled clay and cast in to plaster often combining found objects-plastic bottles etc. My subject in this case, was animals quite often of the Arctic region, the context was climate change, pollution and loss of habitat. This subject I have carried over in to my current wood carving both in sculptures and wood cut prints.
'Mercury'
The smallest planet in the Solar System and the closest to the sun a rocky planet with a metallic/iron core, possibly still molten.
I have carved most of the planets but in my carved Solar System scale is not proportional my Jupiter is only twice the size of Mercury and I have carved two versions of our moon both bigger than Jupiter. I have tried to carve the surface of my planets in such a way as to inform the salient nature of that planet for example, Jupiter, I have carved the stone to form a look like a gaseous ball.
Mercury, I carved in a red sandstone, pitted the surface with craters like the moon, then poured molten lead in to those craters. The sculpture looks very tactile a look I wanted in all my planets. I wanted it to look like you could feel the interior dynamics.
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