Sculpture
Always trying to push the boundaries… I’m continually experimenting with new techniques and materials, trying to bridge the gap between painting and sculpture. Working with the most prestigious bronze foundry in the world in recent years has opened possibilities far greater than I could possibly have imagined.
Bronze
I've always thought in 3D, I guess my painting style is testament to that, but it's obvious to me far further back than that. My entire childhood spent playing (learning...) with Lego is where I attribute much of my foundation as an artist, and I still have a felt tip collage I won a prize for aged 5, which is multi layered. At school it was pottery and woodwork that I most revelled in, then at University studying aerospace engineering, again it was the practical side. And to be honest, right now, sculpture is where my mind spends most of its time.
The challenges and the costs with sculpture are exponentially greater... but also the scope of possibilities and power of the result with a much greater physical presence, should I get it right. Everything I create sculpturally, I can see in my mind's eye from the outset, I wait for that vivid 'Eureka moment' of realisation before embarking on anything, have to be totally clear what I'm working towards, then the 'only' challenge is to bring that vision to reality.
Modelling based on three-dimensional motion capture, developed around 50/50 in digital and physical, using the rarest of assets for hyper realism and dynamic, and a new improved take on what is fundamentally a very traditional output – 3D capture and augmented-reality translated into the age-old traditions of clay sculpting and lost wax bronze casting.
Where sculpture has led me, is almost unfathomable. Creating sculpture just feels like a legacy that is so much more permanent than paint, created from near indestructible materials that will be around for much much longer than I will be, and celebrating subjects often so revered and indeed worshipped, often by those who are so close to them... is a difficult thing to get your head around, to be responsible for creating something of that magnitude. I may well have already created my most renowned work – indeed although I will never rest from furthering what I do, I think that's fairly likely actually. But then I never saw that career defining epiphany coming either, that led me to create Senna 'Eau Rouge'. Inadvertently at first, I appear to have carved my own niche and a renewed self-styled role to celebrate the history of F1 in sculpture. Each statue is 12-18 months' work from concept to realisation, together with the leading artistic bronze foundry in the world, Pangolin Editions. Each one is usually created in three limited edition scales: Life-size, 60% (F1 wind tunnel development scale) and 20%.
Senna Eau Rouge
This life-size bronze statue was created through 2018 to launch at Autosport January 2019, to mark 25 years since the Brazilian’s last race. Since then it has been on permanent display at McLaren MTC Woking. And the start of the next chapter of my career – to celebrate and immortalise the icons and history of F1 in bronze.
The statue was modelled on real life with myself as the stunt body – being coincidentally the same height and build as Ayrton. My aim was to portray the dynamic of Eau Rouge into Raidillon, about which Ayrton famously said “If you take away Eau Rouge, you take away the reason why I do this”. The beauty of modelling on real life is that it inherently includes the natural ripples of the race suit distorted by the thickness of the logos, the strain of holding this position translating nicely into the forces of driving. Evident by the ‘oversteer dance’ I have seen many times in front of the statue since! Perfect.
