Colin Figue

Colin Figue studied at the Ravensbourne College of Art and Design before attending The Royal Academy School of Sculpture between 1966-1969.

After travelling in the Middle East, Africa and South America, Figue lived in Spain, where he worked under private patronage and later in Cambridge where he studied bronze casting with Michael Gillespie ARBS.

From 1974 to 1976 he worked in Portugal for the renowned Irish painter and ceramist Patrick Swift and in 1977 and 1979, with the support of the British Council and the Portuguese Government, he was awarded scholarships to Portugal. For more than a year, Figue worked in the quarries of SOLUBEMA in Vila Viçosa, the marble heartland of the Alentejo.
He has lived and worked in Southern Portugal since 1981. In recent years Figue has traveled extensively in India and spent time carving in the temple workshops of Mahabalipuram in the state of Tamil Nadu.

Figue has sculptures in Open Air and public collections in Germany, France, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia, Japan, Taiwan, China, India, South Korea, Romania, United Arab Emirates, Morroco and the Lebanon and in 1999 was elected a member of the Royal Society of British Sculptors.

 "The hammer and chisel directed by a keen eye and intuitive grasp give the work a human scale and measure. The reach and sweep of the arm, the proportion of finger and hand links the sculpture to universal principles of nature and the cosmos. The works are like points of reference in an environment that becomes articulated and coherent. The boundaries define larger unending forms and patterns visualised and completed in space by the imagination. They express a dynamic harmony of opposite forces through interlocking elements, curved and straight edges, form and space. They expose the intrinsic forces already present in the stone and bring us into contact with its greater reality."

Richard Caston, 1994