I have had some disastrous birthdays and am now happy to keep them a low key affair. I would ignore them completely but for my kids who get so excited about that day, the 4th of April. This year my enthusiastic five year old son, Jack, wrapped up everything he could lay his hands on as birthday presents.

I got a lot of the old books and toys he no longer plays with. Lily, my nine year old daughter, presented me with a bar of chocolate which is about the nicest thing I could hope for. My wife’s presents were a book, socks and underpants that were sorely needed. Both children were disappointed that I did not have a party. It all says something about my age and, despite the let down children, I considered the day a great success. At least I did not crash the car, land up in jail, or the like, as I did when I was an angry young man in wilder bygone days.

‘Flight of fancy’ is a new bone sculpture based on the Icarus theme and is now at The Gallery on the Square.

There is in this work a hankering after that idealistic and impetuous age when young men (or women) fight against their constraints. The work also reflects on my fear of flying and of heights. This presumable all comes from my father, who, before I was one year old, had stalled and crashed his RAF jet, killing himself. I acknowledge a debt to Michael Ayrton whose exhibition travelled this country and which I saw in Grahamstown as a student.

Ayrton was fascinated with the Minotaur myth and focused on making images of Icarus, Daedalus and the Minotaur at various stages of his life. Ayrton interprets Icarus’s actions as a poetic act that had fatal consequences. I have made several images in the Icarus vein; ‘Icarus’ made from wood and now in the Pretoria Art Museum, another ‘Icarus’ made in bronze and the ‘Aviator’, made from bone, and ‘Waxen Wings’ carved in yellowwood, both now in London.

Of course I am not a young man anymore nor the stud I used to be, or at least, thought I was, and of course this bull is tamed as he now wears a ring (through his nose).

Perhaps Ayrton’s minotaur or one of the Picasso bulls are an obvious image for a man of my age. However it is not the brute strength or virility but the loss thereof that inspires the new bone sculpture ‘Bull’. This work contrasts with the Icarus images but remains linked in that they both look back and yearn for things past. Perhaps two sides of the same coin in much the same way as Icarus and the Minotaur are linked in the myth.

The images and thoughts surrounding the recent works makes me think of Dylan Thomas’s poem ‘Do Not Go Gently into That Good Night’ and the words from that poem “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” If this quote makes you think I am about to die, I am not. Not if I can help it, I am only 51. I am hoping for a few more socks, underpants, recycled toys, perhaps a chocolate or two, and am optimistic I will be able to party for a bit longer.