Fallen (John Clare, poet) – Winner of the New Light Sculpture Prize 2024

Ceramic
2023

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Brian Shields was born on the North Yorkshire Coast and now lives and works in the Eden Valley, Cumbria. His artistic practice encompasses – painting, sculpture, print and film. His work sources from the real and the imagined. Frequently images from myth, folklore and romanticism; with a particular focus on the poet John Clare, are repurposed to explore aspects of the human condition.
Selected exhibitions include – The National Portrait Gallery Award (3 x finalist), The Royal Society of Portrait Painters, Birmingham Literary Festival (Poetry and Film), Cumbria Artist of the Year (1st prize), Manger Gallery, New Light Art Prize….

‘Fallen’ (John Clare, poet)
‘The springboard for the piece was an extract from John Clare’s journal, in which the poet cmpared himself to a starling in a cage. The image of Clare identifying as a starling combined with his history of prolonged periods of mental illness swirled into the image of the fallen poet – an avian/icarian plumeted to earth. Whether through paint, sculpture, print or film it is my hope my art holds a compressed mood, a hum, a charged atmosphere. I’m interested in the outsider and the devide/gulf between humankind and nature – it’s seperateness, it’s ‘otherness”.