The Many Faces of Sculptor Wilfrid Wood
The British artist is on a mission to prove that there’s no such thing as a boring mug.
For Wilfrid Wood, there is no such thing as a boring face. The British artist has made a career of finding an interesting facial feature or expression and turning it into a captivating portrait. His sculptures, usually clay busts, are often comical but always brutally honest. His greatest source of creative inspiration, he says, is the human head, and his subjects have included the famous, the infamous, and friends, from Sir Paul McCartney and David Bowie to Vladimir Putin and Mark Zuckerberg. His truth in art sometimes makes his models uncomfortable, but for Wood, that comes with the territory. “It’s the novelty of a face that makes it fun and interesting to sculpt,” he tells an audience at a London festival of creativity.
Born in London and raised in rural Sussex surrounded by a family of artists, including his father who was a natural history illustrator, Wood says it was “inevitable” that he would end up in the visual arts.
He studied graphics at Central St. Martins and began his career in publishing, designing layouts for encyclopedias. Bored by the work, he applied for a job as a “head builder” on the satirical TV program “Spitting Image.” It was there that he began molding his artistic path and realized he could do something he loved and have fun while making a living.
The freelance sculptor works out of his studio in Hackney Wick and is currently working on a series of pastel portraits. “I get loads of people volunteering to be my model from Instagram,” he explains. “It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
The artist as a young man
I had an arty background, and it seemed inevitable that I’d do something visual. My grandma gave me a mini tool set which I made wooden robots with. At school I was the weird gay one with a bowl haircut who was bad at football but good at art.
“Spitting Image” and early mentors
Growing up there was an old lady called Betty Swanwick who lived with a pug and a parrot in the local town Tunbridge Wells. She did strange religious paintings and encouraged me to draw. After college I worked at the TV program “Spitting Image.” There I discovered it was possible to have fun and get paid at the same time. The boss was Roger Law, a massive, sweary, funny, intimidating bruiser. I recently met him again after 25 years and was able to say with absolute truthfulness, “You changed my life.”
Artistic admiration
I love outsiders such as Howard Finster and Henry Darger. My number-one portrait artist is Alice Neel. Recently, I’ve got into German expressionists such as Otto Dix and George Grosz.
Life-altering project
A toy I made for the clothing company Howies called Doh Boy. In my mind, he was a joke fat child. Howies used him as a vague warning not to eat too much. People seem to remember it, maybe because it was non-PC.
Morning routine
I’ve started getting migraines in the mornings, so I spend half the time worrying that I see flickering lights, a sign that one is coming on. I’ve also given up coffee in case caffeine starts one off. Depressing, isn’t it?
Thinking like an artist
I’m less creative than I used to be. In the past, I made things up and had ideas; now I mainly draw portraits from life, which is really just doing wonky versions of what nature has already sculpted. It’s taken me such a long time to realize what kind of artist I am. Reading Think Like an Artist by Will Gompertz helped, in that I realized I didn’t think like an artist, or at least Gompertz’s idea of what an artist is, which is someone with more ideas than I have. I’ve never made the leap of making something truly conceptual. These days I simply bang away at the traditional craft of drawing.
Birds and music
Always. I use a shuffled playlist when I’m drawing someone. Every so often, some birdsong comes up, complete with the spoken name of the bird that is singing at the beginning of their performance. I was drawing a very good-looking model the other day who was completely unresponsive to my attempted jokes, or just about anything I said, but he burst into laughter whenever a bird came on.
Face time
I have a policy of drawing anyone generous enough with their time to sit for me. There’s no such thing as a boring face, though I’d rather women didn’t wear make up. I like men wearing makeup.
Artistic evolution
I started off as a terrible graphic designer, and now all I do is portraits, so things have changed quite a lot. It’s taken me ages to commit to the thing I’m best at. It takes nerve and arrogance to call oneself an artist. I’m always relieved when I see crap work done by an “artist.” I think, “Well, if they can call themselves an artist, so can I!”
Dream project
I need more old people to draw. My dream is to be let loose in a dementia ward where the sitters don’t care how they turn out in a portrait.
Magenta is a publication of Huge.
