Simon Manby, Ashbourne, Derbyshire
I love making things, using my hands and working with real physical materials – the sense of creating a ‘something’. Since childhood I always wished to analyse, understand, record and celebrate thoughts and feelings evoked by the experiences of life. In other words, explore the non-physical, the spiritual, emotional, and intuitive aspects of existence.
I think that through sculpture I am constantly trying to find ways of fusing and bringing together those two essentials of our lives, on the one hand the physical, tactile and exterior, on the other the interior of spirit, mind and heart.
Sculpture by Simon Manby DA(Edin) MA MAFA
Thus my sculptural ‘language’ is concerned both with formal and essentially abstract interests of composition, harmony, balance and proportion, but is critically based on observation of the intimacies of family lives and relationships, explored through the evanescence of ‘body language’, gesture and facial expression.
The aspiration to make sculpture exceeds my ability, but I love doing it and it delights some other people, so that encourages me. Some are able to buy what I make, implicitly saying: “Go on! Make sculpture, we really do need art and beauty as a counterbalance to the pains and travails of existence.” So I go on
simon.manby@gmail.com
Posted: February 19th, 2017
Category: Artists Profiles