Lal Hitchcock

Artist statement

Concepts
Most of my work takes found or discarded objects as a starting point. Humour is very important to me; there is usually a narrative element and the scene set is quite often domestic. Tea in Bed (2) was inspired by the badgers skulls Id picked up on walks close to where I live, Gaudis Jacket (9) from the inordinate amount of china dropped by my mother, while Fish (5) was the result of years spent eating tinned tomatoes. Stevie Cooking (3) originated from a collection of disparate elements Id found on Chesil beach: a plastic pepper, a blue rubbish bin, a wooden table, and some melted rubber resembling intestines.

Influences
Green, environmental, recycling, outsider art, low-technology, theatre, stage-sets, taxidermy, dreams, the unconscious children's story-books, Lewis Caroll, CS Lewis, Gaudi, Picasso, Magritte, Stanley Spencer, Blue-Peter, Mexican day of the dead, Quentin Blake, Lucy Casson.

Career path
Having graduated in Sculpture and Printmaking, I began my professional career as an etcher. Living and working in rural isolation, I became increasingly disenchanted by the amount of mass production involved in the process, and restricted by my chosen subject matter - that of landscape. I returned to making sculptural one-offs, using a wide variety of materials, with an underlying green message. In 1998 I was invited by Hampshire County Councils Touring Exhibition Service to tour a solo show. Part of the brief was educational, involving workshops with primary school children. Since then I have run numerous workshops, mostly with children using reclaimed/recycled materials. In the spring of 2004 I completed a year long community based residency entitled The Story Tree, managed by Artsreach, Dorset's local arts development agency. In July 2004 I was artist in residence at Dorset County Hospital, Dorchester, where I was commissioned to make three pieces of work for the hospitals permanent collection. This led to a year long residency (June 2005 to July 2006) entitled the Arty Lady working with patients visitors and staff throughout the hospital. In June 2007, I was commissioned to make a sculpture for Portland, out of the flotsam and jetsam washed up on its shores. This is now sited at the Visitors Centre, Ferrybridge.