Sculptor. He studied at Camberwell School of Art, 1983–86. In 1987, he was selected by Eduardo Paolozzi for the RA’s Jack Goldhill Award for Sculpture; according to Cornish, he was the ‘youngest ever recipient’. He attended the RCA 1989–92, during which time he was awarded a scholarship to travel to India to study the work of the Aiyanar potter priests. In 1993, he was elected ARBS. In 2000, he was appointed official tour artist on Prince Charles’s diplomatic tour of Eastern Europe and in 2002 official artist with the British Army in Kosovo. He is an academic board member, and occasional tutor, at the Prince’s Drawing School (a charitable trust founded by Prince Charles). Cornish’s commissions include Paddington Bear, 2000, bronze, Paddington Station, London; Stag, 2002, bronze, St James’s Square, London; Christ in the World, 2008–09, bronze, Church of Our Lady Immaculate and St Philip Neri, Uckfield, East Sussex – dubbed by the media, ‘Jesus in Jeans’, because of the figure’s contemporary dress; Vaughan Williams, 2010, stoneware clay, Chelsea Embankment; Mare and Foal, 2013, bronze, Berkeley Homes, Highwood, Horsham; and roundel portraits of G.F. and Mary Watts, 2014, on the Watts Gallery building, Compton, Guildford, Surrey.
Bibliography: Marcus Cornish website; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, p. 9; J. Seddon et al, Public Sculpture of Sussex, Liverpool, 2014, pp. 80–81; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster. Volume 1, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 243–44; Wikipedia.
Terry Cavanagh November 2022
