LAWSON E RUDGE

It would be hard to find a person who had no interest in animals and, to a large extent, it was this premiss which stimulated our own animal studies. Although all our interests in Art go beyond making animals, it is ceramic animals that we are known for.

We live in remote parts of Mid-Devon, North East Cornwall and South Wales where wild life observation is an everyday thing, coupled with our own and our friends' farm and domestic animals. Inspiration for most sculptures comes from observation.

Although we no longer live together, there is still a healthy competitive spirit, which often acts as a stimulus.

Lawson (senior) says of his work with special reference to the flat cow;

Many of the sculptures I make derive from my paintings, for example, the flat cows were the result of painting the landscape which was about the inter-relationship of cows, trees and clouds. I simply thought it would be an idea to make a cow on which to paint a landscape, hence the cow being flat, a kind of three-dimensional canvas.

Numbers, mainly two and five, feature frequently in my painting and sculpture, and for many years their meaning was a mystery even to me. However, I now think their origins come from the days when I was a steam train spotter. A conclusion I came to when I compared a successful sculpture to a steam train. If one forgets the numerical values of two and five and views them in an abstract way they can relate to the wheels of a steam engine, or to the movement of a swan and more.