(b. 1993; London, UK)

Poppy graduated from the Courtauld in 2016 with a degree in the History of Art. She then went on to complete her training in figurative sculpture at The Florence Academy of Art where she was awarded the ‘Graduate in Residence’ Prize for sculpture. In 2019, Poppy’s first life-size sculpture was commissioned in bronze and she won the Tiranti Prize at the Society of Portrait Sculptors’ annual exhibition. The Royal Albert Hall awarded Poppy her first public commission in 2021 and she is currently sculpting monuments of Her Majesty The Queen and Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh for the Hall’s South Porch.

“I presume that my language is figurative because I grew up surrounded by anatomical illustrations, visiting patients on hospital wards each Sunday to chat and “take their history”. Stories and bodies have always seemed intertwined to me and I sculpt from life whenever possible. I have found that capturing that intangible thing, a kind of iconography of moments that someone else might call an essence, or presence, or spirit, requires as much listening as modelling of form.

I discovered the feeling of hands in wet clay at 17, just as I began studying the History of Art. These worlds collided, giving voice and direction to the tremendous feelings I’d experienced as a child sitting quietly with Rothko’s Seagram Murals and trembling before Rodin’s Gates of Hell. At University, I became fascinated by the contentious space between public desire for commemoration and actual monuments that have served to validate particular political, historical, cultural and social perspectives. Mounting public awareness of this brings new and exciting challenges for sculptors and communities who look to figurative sculpture to carry their stories from one generation to the next.”

Courtesy of the artist’s website.