ARTIST

I am a sculptor living and working in mid Wales. I recently joined Sculpture Cymru - a group of practising Welsh sculptors, some of whose work can be seen at MId Wales art centre near Caesws and later this summer at Kidwelly Castle in Carmarthenshire.

My work is concerned with the experience of landscape and the notion of a sense of place. This is drawn from the North European landscape tradition, mediated by practice, a material awareness always to the fore, but post modernism, the work of the archaeologist and the continuing search for a public role for the things that I make are part of the mix. I like the notion of public art and am drawn to the idea that it might be possible to make complicated objects which work on different levels, fulfilling a design brief, being contemporary rather than nostalgic or sentimental, and being meaningful with reference to the history or use of a place. Influences I have great regard for those who live and work in the landscape, and how this lived experience might mesh with those who are obliged to look on, walking, drawing, stone carving, woodcarving, using a camera, making some kind of mediation with what can be seen, felt, researched and affordably done. Recent work in cast iron offers references to an industrial heritage still with us and the possibility of a shared culture of making (this has to be done with other people) a pleasing antidote to the quiet and solitude of the studio based practitioner. Career Path I spent a year in Italy on a Rome Scholarship in Sculpture, where I gained a regard for the work of the archaeologist, and their patient unlayering of the ground as a part of what they do, - history and time revealed in the present. Of great interest was the material power of the objects through which this communication was achieved. My fascination with a sculpted/made object remains undiminished. I worked for many years in the North East of England, exhibiting widely with the Newcastle group, and was appointed Subject Leader in Sculpture at the University of Wolverhampton in 1992. I relinquished my work there in 2006, and have established a new studio in Mid Wales where I continue to make work which addresses the varied experience of landscape. I draw, work in wood, iron and stone, and hope to make new sited works both in the UK and at various international carving symposia.