A contemporary style grounded ‘in historical techniques’

JC: What is your artistic background?

SC: It was fascinating growing up with my sculptor mother Cathy Carman, to be shown at an early age that you have choices on how you live your life and what you do with your life. The environment was amazing, to be surrounded by creative people in 70’s and 80’s Dublin was a gift. I learned mould-making at a very young age, my first sculpture was of a Labrador’s head. My mother Cathy was one of the founders of Temple Bar Studios in Dublin and I spent many happy hours in the studio playing and experimenting with different materials and listening to artists discussing their work, it was a blessing.

I went to Glasgow School of Art after NCAD but to be honest, I didn’t engage with the degree courses at Glasgow College of Art much, I found them very narrow and to a certain extent I found them reductive. I found you had to adhere to the courses very strictly which I found difficult to reconcile with my upbringing being surrounded by so much art. I had a wide set of abilities and the college focus so often was on concept as opposed to what interested me, which was the craft.

JC: What inspires your art?

SC: At the moment horses inspire me the most and I am currently mainly working with horses in both my drawing and sculpture. They are incredible almost unfathomable creatures and are a real challenge to get right.

JC: Who/what are your biggest influences?

SC: I am fascinated by the anatomical drawings of George Stubbs and I have developed an interest in 18th century horse portraiture and also Pre-Raphaelite paintings. It’s the technical detail of the paintings that intrigues me. In terms of stone work, then I suppose Epstein would really have been the man who drew me to stone carving, I also love Russian brutalist sculpture. Leitrim based artist Seamus Dunbar has been a huge influence and mentor for me, and he has an incredible technical ability and eye for detail. He has been so generous with his time and guidance over the years and for that I will always be grateful.

JC: Is there a specific place that you do your work? Do you have a studio?

SC: I have a studio in Tyrone Guthrie Centre and I do some of my smaller carving work in my home-studio on Inisherk on the Crom Estate where I live. For large-scale stone carving I work at the famous McKeown Stone in Stradbally, Co. Laois.

JC: What has been your most ambitious piece to date?

SC: The Commission for the Irish National Stud was the most ambitious piece as the sheer scale of it was new to me. The stone was located in the quarry in Kilkenny, I was immensely lucky to find a flawless stone of such high quality to allow the project to proceed. The stone itself started out at 32 tonnes and then I trimmed it down to 19 tons in the quarry. On completion it was approximately 16 tons. The sculpture stands at The Irish National Stud right by the stallion’s stable. I was lucky enough to win the commission via an international open call and I was drawn to it as I had recently completed a commission for the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, for a memorial for equine artist Debi O’Hehir. Whilst carving that piece and also spending a lot of time working around horses, my sister is a racehorse jockey, my wife is an equine journalist and equine muscle therapist and so there’s a lot of horse talk around me! I began to think about the correlation between Irish horses and the incredible Irish limestone pasture on which our horses graze. The Irish National Stud is located where it is in Kildare, precisely because of the limestone ground which is so good for the equines. Inspired by this connection between the ground and the limestone, I proposed to carve a life-size portrait of their champion racehorse and sire Invincible Spirit. The sculpture is an attempt to tell the story of the connection between the Irish limestone and our incredible Irish thoroughbreds.

JC: What different artistic mediums do you use and which is your favourite?

SC: I use bronze and I use clay a lot to model the horses, but stone is my first love. I use compressed charcoal for my large-scale horse drawings. Stone engages me on holistic level, it engages the technical, the physical and the artistic parts of my brain. It’s both conceptual, physical and meditative… I also find it the most challenging…I find clay very easy and in a sense that’s why I don’t do it as much…It’s the very nature of the material of stone, the challenge of it, that engages me. I generally direct carve, which means not making a maquette but maybe working from a found photograph or image or a simple line drawing. The stone itself would dictate the image too, its weight, shape and type of stone it is. Sometimes you have to find an image to fit the stone and sometimes vice versa. I generally carve with pneumatics (compressed air hammers) and a lot of the work is finished by hand, which is very time consuming. A lot of my recent work has been highly polished which means a lot of man-hours in hand-finishing. There’s also something fantastic to be a part of the ancient lineage of the stone carver, it is in some ways outside the contemporary, its from a bigger picture of thousands of years.

JC: What are you currently working on?

SC: I am working on a solo show for London and several private commissions. I am currently working on a private commission which is a female figurative piece to partner a sculpture the same person commissioned for her collection in Dublin. I am also working on a life size stone head of a Dutch Warm Blood Horse for a show in Cork at Ballymaloe House Estate exhibition in association with curator Richard Scott.

JC: Do you exhibit your work anywhere?

SC: I predominantly work to private commissions but I have over the last few years, been showing regularly with Hambly and Hambly at Dunbar House in Enniskillen and have recently shown with Generator Gallery in Dundee, Scotland.

JC: Any new artistic ventures planned for 2020?

SC: I am working towards a collection of large-scale stallion drawings, inspired by some of the most famous racing stallions in history. I have a number of these type of drawings in private collections including with Olympian Greg Broderick and top Equine Reproduction vet Dr. John Haughey. In particular, I love studying the anatomy and physiology of the horses so that a top level rider or vet couldn’t find fault in the drawing – that’s my ambition, to be able to draw a horse perfectly anatomically. There are a lot of bad horse drawings out there!

JC: What has been your favourite project to date?

SC: 'Invincible Spirit' was for so many reasons, the horse himself is a legend and working at the Irish National Stud was such an honour. It has been a pleasure and a joy to work at McKeown’s stone yard. Since the yard was established in the mid 1950’s most of Ireland’s top stone sculptor’s have worked there at one stage or another. It is an honour to be part of that lineage and in particular at present, to work alongside Eileen McDonagh. The lads at the yard have been nothing but professional, helpful and encouraging from the moment I turned up with the idea for this colossal piece. Everybody has been immensely helpful from the management to the stone cutters in the quarry. I definitely couldn’t have done it without them. McKeown’s have the best quality monumental lime stone in Ireland and possibly Europe and the expertise to match. I don’t think it would have been possible to get a stone of that size and quality anywhere other than Threecastles Quarry in Kilkenny.

JC: What are you up to when you aren’t creating art?

SC: I love to go sea fishing when I get the chance and when I’m at home then fishing in Lough Erne is always a great thing to do for my head and for thinking time. Looking after my wife and I’s horses has become a great passion of mine too. We recently rescued an incredible little Thoroughbred mare who we’ve nursed back to health after neglect and she is a brilliant and funny character that makes me smile everyday! I also really enjoy walking my four dogs on Crom Estate where I live, the National Trust grounds, and especially the ancient oak forest that I’m lucky enough to live on the edge of, is just magical at any time of year.

JC: How would you describe your artistic style?

SC: My style is contemporary but very much grounded in historical techniques. I have always been devoted to and admired the mastering of technical ability. I was exposed to so much art of all disciplines from an early age as my family are artists and writers. For me, more than having a ‘vision’ and learning the techniques to articulate that vision, I have always been interested foremost in making and techniques in themselves and slowly a vision evolves. Also, in my early career, I spent most of my time making work for other people in foundries so I didn’t have time to nurture my own practice as I do now, but it was an incredible way to master techniques. I did experiment with other media, but I always came back to sculpture.

JC: What does your art mean to you?

SC: The world!