colin caffell

Colin Caffell originally trained in Ceramics and 3-Dimensional Design at Camberwell School of Art, where he studied with a number of renowned teachers including Colin Pearson, Ewen Henderson and Ian Godfrey.
Colin went on to run his own pottery in London for a number of years before moving into the less abstract world of figurative sculpture.

He has exhibited throughout Great Britain and has work in private collections in Europe, South Africa and the U.S.A. In recent years he has exhibited with the Royal Society of British Artists (RBA), both at the Mall Galleries in London and at the Henley Festival of Music and the Arts.

He has been commissioned to create a six-foot figurative bronze to stand outside the Farnham Road Hospital in Guildford. He also undertakes portrait commissions, working throughout the country.

Colin`s relationship with West Cornwall, where he now lives, began when he was a student. He always thought of the area as his spiritual home, finding inspiration from the rugged beauty of the West Penwith landscape. Since moving from his previous home in Henley on Thames he has also returned to making pottery.

A subjective history: Born within walking distance of the noisy streets of London`s West End, the refined expanses of Regent`s Park and the smokey railway stations of Euston and St. Pancras, I have always been interested in the relationship of opposites: of man and nature for example; of mother/father and child, man and woman, body and soul or dark and light.

Frequent childhood visits to the British Museum, especially to the sculpture collections of ancient Egypt fired an early interest in the monumentality of man`s aspirations through art, and of how representations of mythology have played a key role in that.

Latterly, Carl Jung`s psychological explorations into the architecture of man`s symbols and mythology have added to that curiosity.

In the sculptural field, Auguste Rodin, a 19th century contemporary of the emerging psychological consciousness of Nietzsche and Freud, has been my greatest inspiration.

Much of my work has been prompted by images and experiences that life has thrown at me, both inner and outer. Many of these also turn out to be archetypal in nature in that they carry both a collective as well as personal meaning.

By the same token, the design is often spontaneously informed by my relationship with the material as the process of creation unfolds - as if the clay itself, and the serendipitous occurrences of that process have as much to say about the eventual outcome as the artist sitting at the armature.

There are even times when elements of that relationship and the creative process touch upon the mystical.

With this in mind, whether working from life or imagination, my focus is always to capture the essence or soul of my subject.