In his remarkable sculpture the poetry and lofty dignity of the horse heads draw responses from the viewer that are fundamentally, if unconsciously, rooted in the ideas of the Antique and of Arcadia, yet remain strangely Contemporary. The sculpture of Nic Fiddian-Green is at once deeply traditional and startlingly modern. The ragged and physical look of his horses with their rough impressionist surface and rough-cut, riveted panels, recall a whole lineage of modernism from Rodin, Bourdelle and Rosso, through Cubism, to post-war figures such as Frink and Marini, and contemporaries like William Turnbulll, Chris Lebrun and Deborah Butterfield. At the same time his inspiration is clearly Classical. Of particular influence, is the Parthenon Frieze which so enthused him as a student and spurred him to become an artist. In his remarkable sculpture the poetry and lofty dignity of the horse heads draw responses from the viewer that are fundamentally, if unconsciously, rooted in the ideas of the Antique and of Arcadia, yet remain strangely Contemporary. The still simplicity and almost spiritual calmness of the pieces strikes an undeniable chord within all who witness them. Born in Hampshire in 1963, Fiddian-Green graduated with a BA in Sculpture from Wimbledon College of Art, London and subsequently an MA at Central ST Martin’s College of Art with a focus on Lost Wax Casting. From THE INDEPENDENT:It is not enough to say that Nic Fiddian Green is Britain’s most accomplished and innovative equestrian sculptor. His huge bronze horses’ heads at Hyde Park Corner and on Trundle Hill above Goodwood, and in many private collections all over the world have literally elevated equestrian art to a new level. To encounter that astonishing bronze on Trundle Hill was to become part of a tableau in which the huge head’s hooded eyes gazed away from the distant spire of Chichester Cathedral, as if on the mythic battlefields of Troy. The key artistic genome in virtually all of Nic’s sculptures is the Selene Horse, which he encountered at the British Museum while a student at Chelsea College of Art. That marble, purloined by Lord Elgin from the Acropolis four hundred years before Christ, has continually provoked Nic, drawing him into ever deeper searches for an essence of form and line that is revelatory rather than simply a demonstration of virtuosity. Art, as Paul Klee said, does not reproduce what we see - it makes us see. This is what Nic’s pieces at the Sladmore galleries in Bruton Place and Jermyn Street attempt to do.The various renditions of Horse at Water express what Nic describes as "just the simple idea of the beauty of a horse". Except that it is not simple. These heads have a sentient, alert quality, as if they know we’re watching them. They radiate the sense of a pause just before movement, which is not surprising: these heads seem almost to pour onto their plinths, or to be balletically au point. And yet they also radiate an aura of calm; anybody whohas encountered the monumental Horse at Water at Hyde Park Corner has experienced something very like TS Eliot’s "still point in a turning world." The patina of these heads, in bronze or mixtures of bronze and lead, are fascinating proof that even the most distinct forms can be given quite different characters by the varying colours and textures of their surfaces. Colouration has been critical to the sculptor and, in his recent works he says he’s been "pushing the threshold of what’s possible." The surfaces are worked, abraded, heated, then treated with chemicals such as ferric nitrate, potassiumpolysulphide, and copper nitrate. The effects are extraordinary. Some heads carry the patina of polished mahogany, some of worn leather; others suggest dark stone or petrified ash, many with the green splashes and dribbles of his trademark verdigris patina. What we experience most of all, though, is the work of Nic’s hands. "I’m trying to get beyond the rim, as I put it," he explains. "I'm trying to get to the edge of form and line – to the mystery of it all." And nowhere was this quest more obvious in his Greek Heads, recently shown at the Sladmore’s Jermyn Street premises. The centrepiece head, formed in repoussé (or beaten) lead, was 14ft long and 12ft high – stopping six inches short of the ceiling and filling half the gallery's front room. It was seen, quite surreally, by passers-by in Jermyn Street. But it's the close-up experience of it that interests Nic: "People are confronted. It’s not on a plinth. They’ll be very subject to it, and it will speak to them. That's why lead is so fantastic: it shows that sculpture is not just about technique, but about what the hand searches for."That search – tactile, sometimes uncertain, emotional, seeking both myth and truth – is reflected in some of the titles of both the Horse at Water and Greek Head sculptures: Beyond the Edge . . . Into the Distance. . . Born, Broken, Risen . . . I Will Look Beyond For a Distant Land. Such are the visions that Nic Fiddian-Green’s hands have searched for. And we are able to share with him what they have found. -- Jay Merrick, Critic, The Independent, London