Stephen Glassborow - Margie Sheppard - Bronze sculpture | Painting | Etchings - Friday 19 May - Saturday 10 June 2023

Clay to Bronze

‘Although my sculptures are made in bronze, my material of choice is clay. Ideas start in my sketch book, and then move to clay. Using clay gives me the flexibility, to change as the idea grows. As much as I love clay, the idea is never complete until it is cast into bronze, the sculptor’s ultimate material’.

Recent Paintings

‘Over the last 10 years I have been drawn to pure abstraction. I find that this approach allows me to tap into a deeper emotional space that narratives and figurative work no longer satisfy. I have immersed myself in large abstract paintings, experimenting with colours and shapes in unusual combinations. The process of getting the colour, shapes, spatial relationships, and surfaces ‘right’ is completely absorbing, and it inspires me to keep innovating and experimenting.

My current work consists of paintings that feature spherical and other elemental geometric forms intersected by linear elements, forming new shapes. Often one shape launches another, I sometimes find myself overlaying transparent shapes, adding depth and complexity to the composition. The paintings use the simplest forms – quadrilaterals, arcs, triangles – within the safety of the grid. However within these parameters, there are some surprises. The grid is becoming less stable, so that the shapes are beginning to spin off, resulting in an uneasy tension between stability and unpredictability. Colour/shape relationships and considerations of scale are also paramount’.