The Artist: Nick Bibby
Nick Bibby was born in County Durham in 1960 and spent much of his childhood wandering the Lake District and Cumbria and developing his abiding love of nature.
"I love to sculpt wildlife, to try to capture the character and vitality of the subject as I observe it going about its daily business."
He drew and painted from an early age and began sculpting commercially at the age of 16, producing small pieces in pewter and white metals. He began casting into bronze in 1992 and his meticulously detailed animal studies have become collectors’ items. Bibby is the perfect sculptor to carry out the painstaking reconstructive work for this project. His deep understanding of anatomy and his astonishing ability to render the natural textures of feather, fur and scale in wax and clay has found unrivalled expression in this collection of sculptures.
"It has become incredibly important to me to 'bring these animals back to life', to try and produce sculptures that look as though they are just about to fly off, walk or crawl away the moment you turn your back, not some dusty, lifeless museum piece. Over the three years that I have spent working on this project, I have become increasingly aware of how close we came to actually seeing these wonderful creatures, only a few hundred years at most, less in some cases, an eye blink of geological time. I dream about them sometimes but when I wake they are all still irretrievably lost."
Click here to see more work by Nick Bibby.
