Leap Sculpture - Limited Edition of 24

I would describe myself as an “accidental sculptor”, as I discovered sculpting by chance. My career up until 2020 was that of a graphic designer. First working in a marketing agency for many years and then as a freelance designer. The freelance work only lasted for just over a year as the pandemic meant that work dried up. However, lockdown gave me the opportunity to discover sculpting. I very quickly realised that I needed a creative output, so began stone carving as my isolation challenge. My parents asked me to carve a copy of a Stephen Page bison in some limestone they had lying around. So I borrowed some rudimentary tools and had a go. As a family, we had previously attended a 2 day stone carving workshop so I knew what I wanted to achieve, and the unseasonably warm weather meant that I could work outside almost every day until September, carving different animals and birds from polar bears to toucans to rabbits. The colder weather forced me indoors where I discovered that the clay maquettes I was making for reference for the stone carving, were works of art in their own right and that I could preserve them by getting them cast. Needless to say, I was hooked! I go to bed thinking about sculpting, and wake up thinking about sculpting. It really has become a bit of an obsession. So much so that I now work in a fine art foundry in the cotswolds. This has helped to fund my work, but also given me a huge insight to the whole process. In the last 2 years I have been fortunate to have sold out of an edition of bronzes and have created many pieces in both resin and bronze which I sell privately and through galleries and sculpture parks. There’s a quote by George Eliot which I feel describes my life over the last 2 years so perfectly… “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” I often think about my life path now and what direction it would have taken if not for the pandemic. Sculpting is my life and I wouldn’t change it for anything.