That’s me in the middle.

Sculptor living on top of a hill with a terrier. Was offered a place at Art school after O’ Levels but instead went to read Philosophy at university.

Key to my work is meticulous observation. I resumed life drawing at Bath Artists Studios in 2007, also with John Meaker in Dorset, David Chandler in Frome and various online studios. Ruth Taylor is a favourite model (2D and 3D).  The transition to sculpture in 2014 was a logical step. Started out carving in stone, now modelling in wax and casting in bronze with the Talos foundry in Hampshire.

I’m currently working on a series of heads named in response to Hill Forts and Earthworks that I’ve known all my life, each one exactly and simply identified by a six figure grid reference. Mainly as a consequence  of reading a collection of essays on Celtic cultural myth and identity; how much of what we think we see in these hill forts is coloured by the invention and influence of subsequent generations. We can never really know what they were like but they still exist.

With the dancing female figures I’m trying to capture the relationship or distance 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.

My sculptural influences are Laurence Edwards, Brian Taylor, Vittorio Iavazzo Anthony Gormley, Henry Moore and Grzegorz Gwiazda

The ‘Zoom sessions’ charts over a year of drawing Ruth on zoom during ‘Lockdown’ and then mammoth 3 hours sessions with the Dulwich Art Group.

Exhibitions

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

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

2022: 44AD Gallery Bath, Group Exhibition ‘Responses to Ruth’.

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

or

Use the form below to contact me (Don’t worry your details aren’t published on the page, you don’t need a website and I’m not going to spam you):

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

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