As a sculptor, Adrian Flanagan had a relatively late start and is completely self-taught. `I went to university to read medicine and then osteopathic medicine later. But, if I had my time again, I`d probably opt for Art School.`
That said, his thorough knowledge of anatomy and biomechanics informs his approach to his work. `The basis for my animal sculpture is accurate anatomy. That lends proportion and movement more naturally to a piece. For me it is critical. If that foundation is right, I feel the essence of the subject emerge. If I don`t get that feeling, the sense that the piece is living, I discard it and start again.`
He brings his experiences of living in Africa and his extensive travels around the world, observing all manner of wildlife, to his sculpture. `I cannot create a sculpture without observing the animal in its natural environment. That gives a piece of work authenticity, that invisible something that cannot be articulated. I like to think of it as spirit.`
Each of my pieces is cast at the Talos Art Foundry in Hampshire.
All pieces are limited editions and come with certificates of authentication.
Sculptures by adrian flanagan
Adrian Flanagan was born in Kenya and grew up immersed in the wildlife of Africa. Those were the days when the government paid anyone with a gun (and all the farmers had them) to hunt and kill leopards, considered vermin because of incessant raids on villages, decimating livestock especially chickens. Game roamed the plains in vast herds, the predator cats did not go hungry for long and the atrocity of poaching, though it happened, was on nothing like the scale seen today.
Adrian was educated at Stonyhurst College, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, King`s College London and the British College of Osteopathic Medicine. It was here that he developed a keen interest in anatomy and biomechanics.
After some years in clinical practice, Adrian started a food distibution business and wrote a novel. One of his childhood ambitions, to sail alone around the world, finally came to fruition when on 28 October 2005 he set off from Southampton, UK aboard his own yacht, Barrabas on a challenge that would test the limits of his endurance. His route `vertically` around the earth via Cape Horn and the Russian Arctic had never been attempted.
Adrian arrived back in the UK on 21 May 2008 to be greeted with a Royal Navy escort and a helicopter vanguard from the Fleet Air Arm. His book of the voyage was published in 2008 and will be republished by Bloomsbury in April 2018.
It was while at sea that Adrian - who had never sculpted but had always been fascinated by sculptural form and texture - sensed a shift in priorities and made the decision to educate himself in sculpture and particularly in bronze as a medium. `I`d never made anything three dimensional, not even at school, not a clay pot, nothing.`
The combination of his experiences in Africa - which continued well into adulthood with frequent visits to South Africa - a fascination with anatomy and movement, a desire for artistic expression and an instinctual sensing that now was the time to begin to sculpt has led him on this journey. `All art whether it`s literature, painting, sculpture or whatever else must come from a deep-seated need within the artist if it is to hold within it that depth and passion which gives the work authenticity.`
For smaller pieces, Adrian works mainly with polymer clay. His pieces are cast at the Talos Art Foundry in Hampshire and are all limited editions.
`Just as a writer must create characters who then come alive and begin to act in unpredictable ways, so to with sculpture. I wait for that moment when the piece I am working on suddenly becomes real and begins to dictate to me what it wants, how it feels. My job is to translate those desires, to let the piece tell its own story.`
