noel blakeman | contemporary sculptor

Noel Blakeman - Contemporary Sculptor - Biography

My route to becoming a sculptor has been an unusual one.....in the summer of 1999 I was following a successful career in the city at an investment bank. A house move, two apprenticeships, and a deep breath later, I now run my own company in the heart of rural Northamptonshire.

Having swapped my pinstripe suit and brogues for overalls and steel toe-capped boots, I spend my days designing and crafting individual pieces. I have honed my skills through two apprenticeships, first with David Bayes and more recently with master blacksmith Andrew Nichols.

I have a passion for designing and making contemporary and functional sculptures using metal as my main medium. I am really inspired by nature, especially trees and plants, I love the form, shapes and intricate details of seed heads and the way that they look so simple but are far more complex.

I love the fact that nature uses very complicated mathematical formulae in order to make what seems at first glance a simple seed head, functional and efficient. For example within a sunflower seed head each individual seed has the maximum space available that is mathematically possible, so when the spirals of seeds start to unwind and spring up they will have enough space to develop and therefore do their job efficiently. Throughout the majority of nature and especially in seed heads you find examples of the Fibonacci series and Phi (the golden ratio) which are both mathematical theories that I use in every piece I make.