How my recent Metal Horse Sculptures came about? A new style and much more.
Since receiving such admiration and wonder for my recent Metal horse Sculptures, I wanted to write a blog about how I made them and how a happy accident led me to find an innovative new style.
Below are some images of my two latest Metal horse sculptures, in the style I call Shouflo, more on the name later. This blog will focus on the creation of the Grazing Horse which is where this style was born.
Grazing Horse Sculpture
Steed Horse Sculpture
To begin we first need to take a trip back to my early scrap metal Sculptures days which led me to get a horseshoe or two. But it was only when my sister got a horse, did I witness the vast amount of horseshoes just one horse can go through in its life. It was crazy every six weeks a horse needs new shoes, so you can imagine the numbers of horseshoes add up quickly. At this point, I’d only made sculptures from Scrap metal car parts. But seeing the farrier so regularly come and fix up the horse with new boots so often made me think I need to re-use these somehow. The first thing I could think of was a rearing metal horse sculpture, made from horseshoes, which I thought would be an epic feat and with a brilliant link and celebration of a horse. At that time no one had taken on such a piece, let alone when you are 14 years old. But full of confidence and lack of inhibitions at a young age I just went for it, with the only intention to keep the horseshoes as they are. Meaning not distorting or chopping them to fit, only choosing the right shoes and positioning them in the right place and alignment.
After many years and hurdles along the way, my first Rearing metal horse sculpture was finished and sold to Cheltenham Racecourse. ( Read more about this here) A year away I began work on a second full-scale rearing horse, I kept the similar method to the last one, with one difference. I chose to use the sides of the horseshoes as well as the front parts. Using the sides of the horseshoes placed one on top of the other in the legs, allowed me to define the muscle strands and forms of the horse while producing an exquisite aesthetic. I followed this principle with the rest of this piece and future metal horse sculptures.
Trojan Horse Sculpture Example
This new method allowed me greater detailing and options than in previous metal horse sculptures, however, it became a bit too easy and limited in what I could do. I wanted to push and sculpt to a greater depth of detail and work with meaty physical metal chunks.
I became inspired by other fellow sculptors, using lots of chopped-up pieces welded together to compose metal horse sculptures. A lot of them used thick steel pieces welded together. I wanted to go one step further and weld lots of metal components together then grind and sculpt into the metal as if I was sculpting clay. Problems with this theory, metal pieces would be difficult to carve into and shape, the next hurdle was the cost of the metal would become expensive. So I tried sculpting with thin sheet pieces but it was a nightmare.
Feeling lost I just pondered around my workshop, looking for inspiration, and simply glanced at my big pile of horseshoes in the corner when it suddenly hit me, why not chop up and use horseshoes. The more I thought about it the more I knew, it’s a perfect solution, they are thick chunky pieces, to which I have a plentiful supply of as well and all I had to do was chop them up into manageable chunks.
Where to begin?
With this being a new idea and style I chose to stick to what I know best for the subject matter, you guessed it horses. I planed to start out small with a foal-like size and if went well I would scale up to larger metal horse sculptures. My intentions were to simply weld up the chopped horseshoes together to create the rough shape of a horse. I would then grind and hack away the metal to sculpt the detail. As I started to weld the horseshoe pieces together I noticed subconsciously I created a section that had a lovely flowing pattern forming. I stopped everything and had a change of plan I decide to go with the flow and work with a pattern and see how it would turn out.
I left the day feeling full of delight and excitement, as I knew I’d stumbled on an innovative contemporary style with bags of potential. However, I still needed to take careful steps to hone in this style and develop it. I set out to plan bigger pieces to create, again sticking to just horses, as I know this animal best and I believe you truly do horses justice by only choosing to sculpt them from this medium.
Drawing plans for the Grazing horse.
Taking this style to the next step and producing full-scale metal horses head Sculpture filled me with anticipation and dread. I chose to focus on horse grazing. My main challenges would be trying to work out a design that creates flowing patterns, while still encapsulating the shape and form of the horse’s head. My concerns were it could get too busy and complicated due to trying to do these two at the same time. I created some drawings to help me but even they were hard to work out and plan. I chose to use it as a rough guide and just play with it and have faith in my instincts and sculpt. The only way to develop and learn in this style is to go for it.
And go for it I did,
The initial starting part was tricky but once a few pieces were together it became a simple matter of working your way up and trying to visualize the horse’s form and how to use the flowing shapes to encapsulate it. The main struggles were the nose and eyes, but once I got past these it became so liberating and fun, with less importance on detail. It allowed room for me to play with shapes. I found it easier to focus on sculpting one side of the head first and then use it as a reference for making the other side.
The more I worked on it and the further I progressed upward the more I enjoyed it, making instinctive flowing shapes on the spot brought me so much joy. It’s a super creative piece to make, but the only problem I found, was like many artists will encounter is when and how to stop. I had to be strict with myself as I knew I could just keep going. I chose to try and fizzle out the lines almost like the flames of a fire. It worked really well as it creates an added bonus of movement to the piece I believe.
So why call these Metal Horse Sculptures Shouflo?
I wanted a name for this style, to make it easier for people to understand and quote these works. As I plan to make a lot of pieces in this style, I needed a name for this range, that wasn’t too cheesy and made sense. My aim was to think of a name that would encapsulate the flowing forms whilst still showing the medium of horseshoes. So numerous mashing out of words and trialing them, finally I settled on Shouflo. What’s great about these Sculptures is you don’t instantly recognize that they are made from horseshoes. Only after closer inspection, can you tell, and I think the name adds to the mystic and charm of these pieces. But what do you think about Shouflo? Leave a comment below. It would be lovely to hear your thoughts.
To sum up !!
I’m super happy with how this piece turned out and also the journey along the way has been so rewarding. I believe the shapes and patterns are the right amounts, and the negative spaces help to focus your eyes on the lines and forms of the horseshoes. I underestimated at the time, how good of a job the negative spaces do, to help break up and shape the horse. For example, the eyes, which I was close to filling in but leaving them hollow does a far better job to define them than if they were filled in. They could have been lost in the Metal otherwise.
As for the pattern, I think the grooves in the horseshoes create these alluring flowing forms as if it’s moving in space. It may be bold to say this, but those forms reminded me of the way Vincent Van Gogh painted, with his sweeping fluid brushwork in his Starry Night.
Overall I feel so blessed to have, stumble upon creating this piece and style, its amazing to see where creativity can take you and push you. Since this sculpture, I’ve been working on numerous commissions and have lots of plans for future pieces.
To see more horse sculptures click the button below.
