Making sculpture has always been an important aspect of my life. Just when it became so I cannot recall, but it was of importance to me as an adjunct to my painting - to make my points stronger in another medium than in paint. To satisfy my natural feelings for creating three dimensional shapes became yet another artistic outlet.
One of my earliest sculptures was when villa-sitting in the South of France, I came by a large piece of olive wood. Because of the knotty way an old olive tree grows, it is hard to find a piece for a sculpture of any size.
Anyhow, I turned this lump into a sort of angel within a shell. I have it to this day, mainly because no-one has bought it but also to enjoy its lovely warm golden colour.
Another odd piece came about when my ex-wife returned from Russia with one of those tourist’s bears. I took an instant dislike to it (it was rather Black Foresty) and without much forethought, turned it into a figure that turned out to be half polar bear and half penguin. Now, pale in wood with no grain, it awaits a future - probably the fireplace.
In the late 1960s I depicted my father’s First World War part in it as a Hampshire Regiment Officer taking part in the skirmishes and battles against the Turks in Mesopotamia (Iraq) in an effort to relieve our encircled army at a place called Kut on the Tigris river.
My sculptural part in depicting that siege was to put myself in the minds of the beleaguered soldiers with their feelings of isolation, loneliness, home-sickness and despair.
To while away the time in extreme weather conditions I imagined them recovering pieces of wood from the Tigris river water and, with bayonets and penknives whittling them into shapes relating to their military position.
There were 9 pieces that I exhibited in a one-man show of paintings and sculpture at the Qantas Gallery, Bond Street, London, as “The Nine Logs from the Tigris”. Several were sold, one to a well known art critic.
Just before, or after, I cast in lead a metamorphosis of the human lot. These started as shapeless folds to represent female organs and eventually developing from male shapes into animal/dinosaur figures. I must have exhibited them (or some of them), as I recall a psychiatrist buying one to put on his desk as a starting point for mental diagnosis.
The lead for these castings (from a lined wooden mould) came from local dockland sources (possibly church roofs) with the lead capsules then used to cover the necks of wine bottles to prevent drinking glasses from being chipped when wine was poured into them.
Several of the castings decorate our house and garden, one so large and heavy that I say to people that if they are able to lift one of them with one hand, they can have it as a gift. No-one could, or would be able to.
A little after this time I found myself in the Cambridgeshire countryside with three mighty elm trees in the garden that had died from Dutch elm disease.
These I marked off with white paint into potential sculptural pieces.
When the trees were felled the pieces chosen were put beneath a row of Scott’s pine trees to season.
The finished pieces represent the people and animals who in ancient times walked the Icknield Way (nearby). Some have been sold individually over the years, others adorn our drawing room.
Two entwined fighting dogs are in The Netherlands, a pig is at Yale in America, others in households, like Sidney pig, which has ears like Sidney Opera House.
We retain 4 pieces, the most popular being a horse almost 6 foot long upon which children love to ride when not used as a perch for us or guests. It is much sought after but Margreet won’t sell it - and I agree.
Two of the elm sculptures have returned to nature. One of which was two lovers in our London garden which became the home of mice before rotting away and was discarded in bits.
The other, a huge mule that a country gallery left on a concrete plinth in a field, before being moved to woodland were it was enjoyed by insects and woodpeckers and crumbled to dust.
When I moved from the country to London I had to leave behind an unfinished 7 foot mother and child and a very large and beautiful iron-age boat, formed mostly with an adze, that was more sculptural than practical. There was something mystical and magical about it.
Since when I have produced no sculptures, no longer having the strength or the tools to do it.
