Turning Man was winner of The 2007 Founders’ Award for Figurative Sculpture, loosely based on the idea of the Last Judgement with one figure descending and one ascending.   It was designed to give the effect of lightness in what is in reality a heavy bronze sculpture.  It was exhibited for a few months in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and now is part of the collection of the Worshipful Company of Founders.

INTERVIEW OUT TAKE

You studied high renaissance art. Which renaissance artists do you most associate with your own work? Which of their approaches to practice and technique captured your imagination or influence how you work today?

Studying at the Courtauld Institute for three years provided me with an endless, eclectic resource for making my own work. The subject matter, both religious and mythological, have been particularly inspiring. For example, Michelangelo’s Last Judgement was a major inspiration for the sculpture of Turning Man’ that won the Founders’ Prize. It took the idea of the damned falling and the blessed rising into a sculpture about hope and the possibility of redemption. I cannot remember vast swathes of what I studied there, almost from when it all came flooding out while writing my finals papers. However, other things are hugely influential, like Rosso Fiorentino’s, ‘Deposition from the Cross’ in Volterra which is perhaps my favourite painting of all time. The artist has imposed a figure of eight, a circular movement, onto the figures in the painting, with bold, sculptural forms and vibrant colors. The Mannerists were able to express religious fervour through the expressive exaggeration of the human form. When I finally went to art school, I used to use black or red chalk and attempt to emulate the drawings of Pontormo that I had seen in the print room at the British Museum. I could go on.