Fawke trained initially as a painter at the Heatherley School but, on encountering the work of Rodin and Giacometti he shifted his primary focus to sculpture. He exhibited with the Society of Portrait Sculptors, 1978 and 1979, and had his first solo exhibition, also of portrait busts, at Chelsea Library, 1982. Other solo exhibitions include Leighton House Galleries, 1986; The Gallery, Cork Street, 1996; and The Air Gallery, Dover Street, 1999. His public statues include Thomas Cubitt (1955), with casts in Pimlico and Dorking; and Vaughan Williams (2001), Dorking. For Felix Dennis’s ‘Garden of Heroes and Villains’, Warwickshire, Fawke was commissioned to execute two statues, Dr Johnson (2009) and Tim Berners-Lee (2013). He was elected ARBS in 1997. He lived for most of his life in Chelsea, working from Chelsea Farm Studios in Milmans Street. At the time of his death, he was working on a series of sculptures based on Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Original source: the sculptor’s website (no longer available).
Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 454–55; The Chelsea Society.
Terry Cavanagh November 2022