†Nic Fiddian-Green (b.1963)

†Nic Fiddian-Green (b.1963)
Still Water, 7", 2021
Signed with initials and inscribed NFG/A/P (to base of neck)
Bronze on an oak base, an artist's proof
32cm high (including base)

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Born in Hampshire in 1963, he graduated from Wimbledon School of Art after a three-year degree in Sculpture. Engrossed in the horse as a subject and working in marble, he was greatly moved by the power, skill and beauty of the Parthenon frieze and the horse as depicted by the Ancient Greeks. In particular the remarkable “Selene” horse at the British Museum.

He next attended St Martin's School of Art where he learned the skill of casting in bronze. He gained a Diploma in Advanced Lost Wax Casting and then began to cast his own work whilst living in Stoke Newington. In 1992 he moved to Gozo with his wife Henrietta and he continued to cast his own work for numerous commissions he received, particularly from religious communities on the Island. Upon the birth of their first son, they moved back to Wintershall, near Godalming, Surrey where they have lived since.

Through sheer determination and passion for his subject Nic Fiddian-Green has stayed true to the form of the horse's head for 25 years. The task of capturing the spirit and power of the equine form can be argued as almost a long-term obsession for Nic. We have been venerating horses in art as long as we have ridden them and Nic’s sculpture continues the very long line of artists inspired by these animals. The earliest example of art ever discovered in Britain, was of a horse: a flat bone with a horse’s head carved into it of 10,000 BC. Through da Vinci’s sketches, the sculpture of Degas, the paintings of Constable and Stubbs, to the work of recent masters, like Marini, Frink and Flanagan; Nic’s glorious obsession with the subject is a worthy inheritor of many distinguished forbears.

Nic’s encounters with an array of life-threatening illnesses a few years ago caused an obvious and honest creative re-assessment. There emerges a stronger, deeper and more contemplative vision that permeates the new work via modes of stillness and reflection. He shows us how his spirit and his faith help him triumph over the physical. In the eyes of his model’s, we feel pain, strength, fear, wisdom and more as he asks complicated questions of the viewer that leave a powerful and spiritual resonance.

In his recent body of work he continues to show he is an artist of our time, formed and inspired by his recent experience. The early influences of the elegant Parthenon frieze are still apparent, the classical Greek principles of grace, beauty, serenity, and harmony balanced with new sensibilities of scale to create both unique and modern forms of sculpture.