Can YOU name a new landmark?

A new sculpture sits on the course of the former A3 separating the National Trust’s Hindhead Common and Devil’s Punch Bowl, GU26 6AB, following a snowy launch on 23rd March. During the course of the final 10 days working, lots of words started to come to me but none quite seemed to fit a final […]

To YSP: 2013 launches, exhibitions and teaching

An exciting year in preparation, with the last two heads of the Sculpture Series being completed and a Times photographer documenting progress of the critic sitter, Nancy Durrant, at Fittleworth in February. The Surrey University acquisition of the ‘Charmer’ bronze relief has been delivered but not yet sited. The Hindhead carving experience has been hard […]

Bovines and gut feelings

We use the term gut feeling as a visceral emotional reaction to something; often one of uneasiness. However this does not originate in the stomach but in the subconscious, which sends a message through the vagus nerve to the stomach. Half of our nerve cells are located within the gut and these are an important factor in […]

Strangling the sublime

Enthusing about the sort of things that goes through an artist’s mind in responding to place is thought-provoking. I biked around Hindhead’s Devil’s Punch Bowl distilling what I felt were the most visceral parts for me – a sublime landscape partially reborn, a heinous murder and narratives of good versus evil. Conan Doyle couldn’t have planned better, […]

Improvisation and carving

John Fowles’ short story The Ebony Tower introduces Henry Breasley, a veteran painter talking to his future biographer David Williams who happens to be a young, conceptual artist: ‘My dear boy. Painted to paint. All my life. Not to give clever young buggers like you the chance to show off. Don’t care a fart in […]

Where there is form, add clay

After all, it is not ignorance which damages the clarity of our portraits, but the accumulation of knowledge. Alain de Botton – ‘Kiss and Tell’, 1995 The Amesbury Preparatory School in Hindhead is unique in being the only purpose-built school by Edwin Lutyens. It had an arts festival in March 2012, the final day of which saw […]