A sad little man with matchsticks for hair



The original piece before it was cast.
It was made of wood, matches, wall filler,
cement powder and acrylic paint.

The comment I most often hear about my sculptures is:  

“Where do you get your weird ideas?”

To be honest, I’m not quite sure. Sometimes it’s a semi-logical process, where I start with an idea and basically execute it, as I did with Fat Cat; sometimes it’s a bit like seeing shapes in clouds, and allowing my subconscious to take over.

For example, this piece started as a lump of wood stuck on the end of a dowel rod, over which I then sculpted a face. For a while, it gathered dust on a shelf, until one day I had the odd idea of using matches for hair. Quite why, I don’t know.

Then it lay around again while I worked on other things. At some point, over morning coffee, I did some thumbnail sketches and the piece began to assume it’s final shape.

As it progressed, it changed. I think the face originally had a mouth and I even toyed with using binoculars for eyes, but eventually, when I simply made holes to mark the eye positions, I liked the way they looked and left them that way.

All sorts of visual references crept in too. The hands were modeled to look like rubber gloves filled with water, the coat became furry, and the feet ended up being a combination of diving flippers and carpet slippers. Why? I have no idea. But I like it!

The part of the process I enjoy the least is naming the piece. A name somehow forces a preconception on the viewer, which is not my intention. Someone looking at my work must be allowed to interpret a sculpture entirely independently.

Nevertheless, good friends of mine, on seeing the figure, burst into laughter and said it reminded them of someone they knew called John Willie. So, with respect to all you John Willies out there, that’s what I named him.