Every artist or sculptor has his own approach to his subject, his own methods and his own way of depicting the animal that he wants to portray. For me to capture the essence of my subject in sculpture I like to become that subject in every possible way. In many respects the majority of my sculpting happens in my mind long before I bend wire or throw clay. The sketch happens within me as opposed to being on paper. By the same token there comes a point when I realise that the work is finished and to fiddle further would be to its detriment. The ideal for me is to travel far and wide and to find my subjects in their own environment. However in order to make the best use of this, considerable study is required from trips to the Natural History Museum, the viewing of some of the many stunning films produced on television and reading countless fascinating books which contain wonderful photographs. There are also the zoos.
Work produced in the field captures the raw essence of the subject as you see it. The work I produce has inevitably to be made at speed with energy and immediacy. These are my field studies, sketches in three dimensions. Although I work with speed and energy, when on safari I am completely immersed in the subject, in the same way when back in the studio I spend a lot of time considering the animal, mulling it over in my mind. I do not allow myself to be tempted to alter these studies once back in the studio because what I bring back from the field has the soul and the spirit of that animal or bird and the raw environmental conditions that I was working in e.g. the deep cold of the Himalayas or the dust and heat of Africa. On return to my studio I bring back a store of knowledge and understanding of the subject which can then be directed towards creating more studied pieces and in larger scales; my field studies are limited in size by what I can carry in my backpack studio!
I have always been totally committed to conservation. The more I have travelled to various parts of the world, the more I realise the pressures that the world’s species are under, pressures that are almost invariably imposed upon them by man. I want so badly through my sculpture to raise awareness of these issues and one way or another to support our environment and its species before problems become irrecoverable.
