FIGUE, Colin
Born in England in 1943. Ravensbourne College of Art and Design 1960-1964. The Royal Academy School of Sculpture 1966-1969. After travelling in the Middle East, Africa and South America, he lived in Spain, where he worked under private patronage and later in Cambridge where he studied bronze casting with Michael Gillespie ARBS.
From 1974 to 1976 he worked in Portugal for the renowned Irish painter and ceramist Patrick Swift. In 1977 and 1979, with the support of the British Council and the Portuguese Government, he was awarded scholarships to Portugal and worked for more than a year in the quarries of SOLUBEMA in Vila Viñosa, the marble heartland of the Alentejo.
He has lived and worked in Southern Portugal since 1981. In recent years he has traveled extensively in India and spent time carving in the temple workshops of Mahabalipuram in the state of Tamil Nadu.
Artist statement:
The hammer and chisel directed by a keen eye and intuitive grasp give his work a human scale and measure. The reach and sweep of the arm, the proportion of finger and hand links the sculpture to universal principles of nature and the cosmos. The works are like points of reference in an environment that becomes articulated and coherent. The boundaries define larger unending forms and patterns visualised and completed in space by the imagination. They express a dynamic harmony of opposite forces through interlocking elements, curved and straight edges, form and space. They expose the intrinsic forces already present in the stone and bring us into contact with its greater reality.