Simon Manby
Poolside Figure
Bronze £8,750
The figure is on the point of unbalancing, which may be interpreted literally or allegorically.
Eve
Bronze £7,750
Eve walks forward into the future but looks back to an idealised lost garden of youth and innocence.
For some 50 years I have been fascinated with making sculpture. Numerous people have been moved and delighted by my work, sometimes buying several pieces. Occasionally I hear from those who bought a sculpture years ago and they tell me how it has travelled the world with them, becoming a family icon and heirloom. The encouragement of every client has sustained not only our livelihood but has nourished the wish to create, for art surely flourishes best within the relationship between artist and patron.
Sculptor and letter-cutter, born in Buckingham into a family of artists. Son of R.M. Manby an architect who was descended from West Derbyshire farming stock, and Judith Da Fano, a distinguished Lake District artist. Grandson of Dorothea Landau, late Pre-Raphaelite painter. Simon was brought up in the north of England and educated in Scotland. He studied sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art under Eric Schilsky 1960-66. Taught sculpture at Stoke College of Art, leaving in 1972 to work as a freelance artist.
Early figurative work in clay gradually gave way to more formal expression through larger scale carving in wood and stone, some approaching, or entirely abstract. Simon’s sculpture is now predominantly cast in bronze or sometimes iron. At present his work is entirely committed to the figure. Recent sculpture is lighter and joyous in spirit.
