Born and raised in Whanganui, Hamish Horsley was based in London for over 30 years, working as a professional artist and teacher. He built an impressive reputation with many significant and often monumental public art commissions and private projects. Foremost of these are The Way in Durham, UK and the widely acclaimed Tibetan Peace Garden situated outside the Imperial War Museum, London.His works are found throughout the UK, Northern Europe, the Middle East and more recently India, Vietnam and Thailand.
Maquettes provides us with a timeline of the artist’s exploration of themes and imagery over the past 20 years. With a continuing focus on environmental harmony and the nature of form and design. Horsley continually adapts the patterns and rhythms occurring naturally in the elements and earth formations. Beginning with small sketches and a lump of clay, Horsley works his way into his projects, finding the immediacy and flexibility in the clay an ideal way to develop sculptural images. These are further progressed in his monumental stone carvings. The clay ‘sketches’ remain both as reference points in his working process and as sculptures in their own right. These intimate works, cast in bronze for this exhibition, mark time and place.