The Sculpture
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Angel is mounted high on the trunk of a Douglas fir tree. The simple stylised figure is attached to the trunk by its arms and juts out at right angles to the tree. It seems to be grasping the trunk as it falls from above, but this is open to personal interpretation.
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It is made from shapes of sheet bronze welded together. Doug deliberately chose bronze as this metal is associated with urban statuary made to celebrate "great" personalities or military/political figures. The angel was made as a tribute to the writer and playwright Dennis Potter, whose recent death was lingering in Doug’s mind at the time. He admired the way the writer strove to take daring risks despite living with severe pain, and also the way he combined narrative with powerful images.
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The idea for Angel came from his memory of a scene in Potter’s television series "The Singing Detective" where a boy climbs to the top of a tree and sees the forest and landscape unfold below him. In this way, the angel could be seen as a symbol for the human spirit - or the best of it.
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"Despite a comparatively short lifetime of confrontation with his own particular wall of pain, he (Potter) unfailingly retained and expressed a view from a high and daring perspective. I conceived and made this work in acknowledgement of Potter’s perspective."
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