My sculpture is both figurative and narrative often commenting on the human condition through dark humour or comical imagery. Bright colours often disguise the true nature of the subject matter where images are selected or combined for their variety of interpretation. The idea usually starts in response to some form of stimulus. Usually this will be visual: a poster at a Barcelona bus stop, an advertisement seen while waiting in the Metro, a medieval fresco with its underlying symbolism, the chiaroscuro of a Fritz Lang film, an 18^th century theatre engraving, fairground art,  “My First Picture Dictionary”, or maybe a Heath Robinson cartoon. Ultimately the image impacts in some way with my experience as a human or has an awareness of and response to what is going on in the world around me. Because I work slowly and have a relatively small output work is shaped and modified at each stage of its development

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A piece like “Pharoah’s Dream” (2004) is as much about what is happening in Iraq today as anything recorded in the Bible. The ambiguous message might be the same. What seems at first glance as hieroglyphics on closer examination reveals itself to be a helicopter or a war plane. Oil barrels sit in the “lottery cage” of the body of a cow.

“The Car” (2004) is at once both car and ambulance. It recounts people I’ve known who “left before their time.” The car is seen as the force of destruction both literally and figuratively.

“7” (2000) The title refers to the name of the film but the real source of inspiration is Bosch’s table in the Prado depicting the seven deadly sins. Grouped up and around a tower each sin corresponds to a little scene: The overweight waiter surrounded by his food. The wife literally carrying the family. The lady in a pose from a Stanley Spencer painting sawing the man in half. The miser with his basket of gold coins. And so on.

“Curate’s Eggs” (2000) is on a personal level my irritation with the art world. But it might as easily be about personal rejection and isolation or about the nature of good and bad in art today. This piece was constructed from a fisherman’s fly box into which I made some eggs and left various messages: “I will be so bad. To be bad is to be good. To be good is to be boring” Malcolm McLaren. “Complex is bad. Simple is good Simple and complex is very good. Skill is bad. Virtuosity is bad. Caustic orange is bad. Acid yellow is bad. Searing vermillion is bad. Battleship grey is scintillating. Battleship grey is chic. Battleship grey is good. Glass is good. Formica is good. Felt is good. Densotape is very good. Big rubbish small space is very good. Small rubbish big space not so very good. Theft is bad. Appropriation is good. Many art chums is good. No art chums is bad. Very old is very good. Not so old not so good. Almost dead is good. Very dead is very good.”

In the “Regnabo,Regno,Regnavi” (1996) child’s building blocks  and naval flags spell out the message of the medieval epithet (I will reign, I reign, I have reigned ) against the backdrop of a wheel of fortune which will not stop for those tied to it.

“The Choice” (2004) “Well it’s always been my nature to take chances. My right hand holding back,while my left hand advances”    Bob Dylan from “Angelina”

“The Penitent” (1998) would be immediately recognisable to Medieval Man as a “doom” sculpture. Opening out the sculpture shows the good ascending the stair to heaven while the bad are pulled down by devils before being thrown in to and washed away in the river of life. It was made after a visit to witness the ceremonies and traditions in Seville during the Semana Santa.

The characters who inhabit my sculptures come from an imaginary group which I have called the “Zirkus Dix”. Like a real circus it can be read as a metaphor for the wider world and in many ways I try to make them as real as possible. Some have names. Some tell their stories freely while others reveal them slowly or not at all. Some display their strengths, others their failings. Some are Swordswallowers, Human cannonballs, Fireaters, Acrobats, Strippers, Sailors, Flappers or Toffs. Some are Fanatics, Mystics, Carnival revellers, Illusionists, Gamblers or Fallen angels. Some are Alcoholics, Resurrectionists, Butchers, Bakers or Candlestick makers, Humpty Dumptys, Harpies, Medusas, Madonnas, Snakemen hybrids or Multi-legged dance troupes. Some have sheep’s bodies and men’s heads. Some have a woman’s body and a sheep’s head . Some of them are just like me.

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