Page 31 - Studio International - November 1968

is your practise? scale, squeezed area of colour, etched line, embossed surface, and the
I still do pretty much the same thing. The scale is fixed before I start. imprint of a copper plate.
Then I select a material that can be worked very quickly. I make a
full-size model. Most of the time I use hard-board. It is the cheapest Early on in our talk, you mentioned enhancing the whiteness of the wood of
and easiest to work. All the critical decisions are taken at this stage. certain sculptures you made. You refer to this activity as a form of colouring.
The final material is decided according to whether I feel the sculp- How do you think of colour in sculpture? Have your ideas in respect to it
ture is an inside or outside piece. Some pieces I make myself and changed? You, in effect, mentioned texture just now, in relation to prints. How
some, depending upon the materials, are fabricated for me. Custom- does texture figure in your sculpture?
arily, and by preference, I finish the pieces myself. There have been The introduction of colour first came because it was necessary to seal
one or two exceptions. the laminated blockboard. The more precise forms I began doing
demanded a more anonymous surface, and paint provided a uniform
What relation does drawing bear to your sculpture? Do you draw as a skin. At first I used colour as an emotive factor; later, it became more
preliminary stage? a device for reflecting or absorbing light. As to texture, it has been
Sometimes I do. Most of the time, drawing for me is a related but eliminated in all but one of the fibre-glass sculptures, Trengannu I.
separate activity. Drawing is immediate, a kind of personal diary; I left the fibres outside to make the surface much tougher—resistant
sculpture has to be at a remove from such activity. Now and then to scratches. It was an experiment, partially to see how this surface
my drawings evolve into sculpture, but I don't draw for sculpture as stands up to various sorts of wear. Apart from this, my interest wasn't
a plan or blue-print. in texture as such; I wanted to give a precise form an integral
roughness.
Nevertheless, your sculpture might be thought in some sense graphic. Its flatness,
linearity, concern with edges, clean shapes are relevant—qualities alive to You speak of light in connection with colour. What importance has light
drawing. How do you account for this? absorption or reflection in your work?
The relationship is inferential. Probably it cuts both ways. What The forms are very much affected by the action of light. If you have
brings drawing and sculpture together for me is my particular way of a reflectant colour, it tends to tighten the sculpture and concentrate
seeing things. the form. An absorbent colour seems to expand form somehow.

The relationship doesn't come from the activities; it underlies them. Do you see any contemporary sculptors sharing your concerns closely? To put it
Yes. another way, who has influenced you, do you feel special sympathy for any of
the moderns?
Flow do your prints fit into this pattern? Are they of the same order as the I tend to like certain pieces by certain sculptors rather than their
drawings? works in general, but I am not aware of sharing attitudes. An early
No. The prints are more related in method to the sculptures. I use and direct influence was Brancusi. Later, it was Giacometti's small
the image as a unit, printing it twice or sometimes reversing it and figures spaced on a platform. The scale and tension he achieved by
so building the print. Graphics interest me not as a means of repro- repetition fascinated me. More recently, I have come to like very
duction but as a medium with specific qualities and characteristics: much the late work of David Smith. n