Plans for Statues, Showing the Process

Armagh County Museum and Bridge Street Studios Gallery Summer 2023

In this exhibition of work I’ve tried to make visible the evolution of my ideas from a few lines in charcoal through to a solidified form in bronze. 

The process:

“Trying to render an idea, an essence in a drawing – draw say, the rain, the mountain as a figure, the feeling of jumping off a cliff  

Often using figures as allegory, gesture as metaphor for a concept, or to evoke a feeling

Drawing is a powerful means of working these out – making associations and sorting through instincts, symbols and images.

Translate the drawings into 3 dimensions, extract the essence – using the qualities of line, the material, the image, scale, volume, weight …

Instinctively and quickly generating forms using quick and cheap materials making 3D sketches and collages.

Playing with forms, gestures, scale, texture…. weighing up contrasts, finding a meaningful angle or shape. This is a lovely stage, because everything is wide open and full of potential – inspiration is everywhere you look.

At some point decisions must be made – narrowing it down, choosing this and not that.

Through all these stages an idea is moving, mutating, dodging around, inhabiting one form then another until eventually it comes to rest – solidified and permanent, cast in bronze, carved in stone, fired in clay. 

The commitment must be made eventually and the ideas which have occupied my head are now outside it, a thing in the world. “