I am a professional British sculptor. I have been continuously developing my own practice since graduating with first class honours in Fine Art at Norwich University of Arts (2015). Since 2015 I have been working in foundries and with art fabricators building an advanced skillset in the entire bronze/metal/resin casting processes. For the last 3 years I have been running my own mould making and casting business. As well as producing my own sculptures, I work day to day with established sculptors, enabling them to cast and finish final artworks.
My practice explores the notions of stability and instability whilst portraying a reflection of self and the human response to life incidents, most importantly demonstrating that there is always a choice, a dark and a light. A reaction or state of being is suggested in interpreting the unconscious mind into formations of cast objects or shapes in lead, bronze, aluminium, plaster and jesmonite. The forms often use everyday mundane objects to visually describe daily scenarios using the language of material to depict the mental state being explored. This lets the object give a literal explanation of capturing how an emotion might be felt in a moment and often contradicting an objects property. A bath which is a place of cleansing is made filled with lead, depicting a scene of being weighted. Pillows seeming light and soft being a place of comfort are imagined rigid and brittle. A cast iron bar which looks unbendable, bendable. It might not be as it seems…
I have been researching the work of Carl Jung and his theory of collective consciousness which in inspiring me to create a series of sculpture which is focusing of his theory of ‘Shadow Self’. The exploration of accepting all parts of the self, the light and the dark.
“The meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one's own shadow. The shadow is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well. But one must learn to know oneself to know who one is.”
- Carl Jung
I believe it is very important to talk about mental health and the impact it can have when presenting to the world, giving a sort of comfort to the audience - even if the sculpture might provoke melancholy. I see my artwork as a personal development of the self, a cathartic working-through my own feelings.