Grotesques

LATEST WORK:

Green Eyed Monster

“Oh! Beware, my Lord, of Jealousy
It is the Green eye’d monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.”
Othello. Act 3 Scene 3

Green Eyed Monster had a gestation period of decades. It was conceived out of The Sculptor’s Disease at the Royal College of Art. It’s birth-pains came over numerous visits to Pangolin Sculpture Foundry in Gloucestershire. It represents the struggle, suffered by every artist, between the ideal concept of Art and the commercial corruption of the Art World. Green Eyed Monster is a fetish, or charm, to ward off negative emotions. In form and material it is inspired by the Pitt Rivers Museum and the African galleries in the British Museum.
The Green Eyed Monster has been difficult and perverse throughout its slong gestation so its fitting that the last phase should be its rebirth. The Monster is transformed from one material into another.

Crying Woman One

This is one of several memorials to Dora Maar
Carved in boxwood and set on an oak fragment the carving is based on Picasso’s series of portraits of Dora. She was a professional photographer and probably the most intelligent of Picasso’s lovers. After Picasso’s rejection she spent the rest of her life as a recluse.

The Serpent was one of a trio of wooden figures that included Adam and Eve, the last two unfinished. The Serpent was carved out of boxwood with a laminated plywood tail. I roughed out the shapes of Adam and Eve in old pieces of oak and then discovered that the wood was too far gone to carve. Only the Serpent remains. I have always had a soft spot for the Serpent as she appears in ‘Genesis’ and ‘Paradise Lost’.

2021
84 cm high x 18 cm wide x 12cm deep
Painted Boxwood