Working Statement

I am trying to interest galleries in selling my work and one has asked for a cv (very brief in my case) and a working statement. Now I normally regard these things as rather precious but you have to play the game, so with tongue welded to cheek here is the first draft:

'Art is about humanity. It is about our emotions and how we respond to the world we are in. Figurative art has the power to convey emotion in a way that abstraction does not because we have learned the language of the human body and how it displays emotion from the very earliest moments of our lives.

To be effective a sculpture must live and move; stylisation can help this. Simplification of the line and form of the figure does not invalidate its ability to communicate. It can enhance it by removing the artists idea of the particular, the original, and letting the observer find their own resemblances – allowing them to identify with it. My current style, with the tapering body shape and exaggerated hands and feet arose from experience drawing in public, seated on the ground. I realised that I shared the viewpoint of a small child and I think this subconscious memory encourages people to feel positively about these images.

My most recent work has been divided between experiments in life-like portraiture, which is challenging in the sense of capturing the spirit of the sitter as well as a mechanical likeness, and simplified, almost caricature figures. These figures have tended to be comic, recognising stereotypes and idiosyncrasies in the people I know. I especially enjoy the guessing game among people who see them about who I based them on.

Some of these stylised figures, however, have started to make use of this ‘recognition factor’ to explore more complicated subjects and to ask questions about where we are as a society. I would like to think that all these pieces can be experienced at more than one level and that any deeper meanings that emerge does not remove from their aesthetic appeal.'