Now I have your attention dear reader.

I’m living on top of a hill outside Bath in Somerset with a friendly but protective terrier. Was offered a place at Art school after O’ Levels but instead got a good offer to go and read Philosophy at university.
Family legend has it that my ancestors were outlawed in the Somerset marshes at the time of King Alfred. They gave him shelter from the vikings, leaving him to watch the cakes; but preoccupied with his problems he let them burn so an old woman boxed his ears. The story is an allegory on the duties of kingship.  

I started life drawing again at Bath Artists Studios in 2007, and with John Meaker in Dorset, David Chandler in Frome and with various online studios. Ruth Taylor is a favourite model (2D and 3D).  The transition to sculpture in 2014 was next. Started in stone, now modelling in wax and casting in bronze with the Talos foundry in Hampshire.

“The object is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.”

I’m currently working on a series of heads named in response to Hill Forts and Earthworks each exactly and simply identified by a six figure grid reference, this is the immutable quantity we’ve given these places, anything else we try and say about them is coloured by the mythology, invention and influence of subsequent generations. Like a palimpsest we are still adding and subtracting to those myths today. We can never really know what they were like but they still exist in the same grid reference.

The dancing figures are trying to convey the relationship between muscular tension and the centre of balance. As a child I was fascinated by a black and white photograph of Rudolf Nureyev’s feet showing the cumulative effects of dance on the forms of his feet.

Sculptural influences are Laurence Edwards, Ellen Christiansen, Brian Taylor, Vittorio Iavazzo, Henry Moore, Anthony Gormley and Grzegorz Gwiazda.

Drawing is an important part of my practicing for sculpture. “artists have nowhere to hide when drawing, it is a place where the viewer will get closer to the maker and find out who they really are”

Exhibitions:

2025: Bath Society of Artists, Open Exhibition.

2025: Bruton Art Society show.

2024: Q Gallery Group exhibition (Lacock, Wiltshire)

2024: Bruton Art Society show.

2024: Black Swan Arts (Frome) Open Exhibition.

2024: ‘From the solid to the Fragile’ Group exhibition 44AD Gallery.

2024: Royal Commonwealth Society Bath artists exhibition: Moon Gazers and Star Finders 44AD Gallery.

2023: Bath Society of Artists, Open Exhibition (2 pieces).

2022: Bath Society of Artists, Open Exhibition (2 pieces).

2022:  ‘Responses to Ruth’ Group exhibition 44AD Gallery.

2021: Bath Society of Artists, Open Exhibition (2 pieces).

2020: Cotswold Sculptors Association, Creating Spaces.

2019: Bath Society of Artists, Summer Open Exhibition.

2019: Cotswold Sculptors Association, Creating Spaces.

2017: Bath Society of Artists, Summer Open Exhibition.

2016: Black Swan Arts (Frome) Open Exhibition.

2015: 2nd prize, Freshford and district Horticultural Show(!).

2009: BAS drawing class exhibition.

Say hello!

You can find me on Instagram: nigel_parkes

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I’m open to commissions and every picture/sculpture is for sale.

All images on this site belong to me and are copyrighted.