About Me

My blacksmithing career started 10 years ago by completing a training course at HCT (Herefordshire College of Technology). From this technical foundation I developed my making skills as a journeyman blacksmith in London, where I had the opportunity to be involved in a variety of challenging large-scale projects.

As my capabilities as a maker progressed I became increasingly eager to make work that expressed my ideas about the potential of forged metal used within a contemporary context and wanted to make material my own artistic vision. To realise my creative ambitions, I returned to education (and Hereford), completing the Artist Blacksmithing degree course at HCA (Hereford College of Arts.)

As an artist blacksmith, my work fuses contemporary artistic ideas and design principles with traditional craft techniques. Forged steel appeals to me as a medium because of the diverse ways the material can be applied; steel is a physically strong material that can be used to create robust and durable structure and is malleable so can be manipulated into the most varied forms whilst retaining its strength. Ironically it was imagining potential metal works in the highly urban environment of London that gave rise to my desire to give metal the aesthetic of growth and movement in natural form; excited by the way such a hard and heavy material can express the velocity and vitality of the organic.

The visual idea that underpins my designs relates to growth and movement in natural form, the way it is visually expressed within the structure of plants, shells and skeletons in particular. I gather information that conveys this using drawing to analyse structures in order to find forms and lines that can be the starting point for a design. To translate these drawings into steel I seek out methods of manipulating the metal: extruding, bending, punching, that will emphasise the essential qualities of the original form. Rather than creating a replica of the original form in metal, I aim to borrow and decipher its energy.

Blacksmithing is currently in a very exciting position; as a traditional production craft it has been superseded in many areas by modern industrial methods. Rather than dying out though, it is evolving as a new generation of artist are adopting traditional forging techniques as a visual language, this contribution to the continuing dialogue between art and craft is something I am very thrilled to be part of.

At present I am working on a commission to produce two large garden gates and a pergola for a private client who is remodelling their garden to accommodate a large Lyn Chadwick sculpture. I am also producing a new body of sculptural work to be shown in galleries nationally from early-Summer.