Double Figure – detail

25 cm high
1995
private collection

Gabriel Garcia Marquez has said that he believes that every great author always tries to write the same book over and over again – it just takes different forms. The core that is within, that which makes the author or artist create, is always the same.

I know it is the way I work. I always return to the head, the figure, the human body. Its beauty and mystery continues to amaze and move me. This detail is from a piece made for my first solo show in 1995. Seen from the front, back or three-quarter view, it is a small, double figure, two heads forming one bust. Viewed in profile from each side from a particular angle, one head disappears behind the other, leaving one seen alone, singular.

I return to this often in my work, the idea of the single figure self-contained, rather than that which is as we say in Norwegian, "to eine" – to be of two.