Born into a family of British artists who mingled with the likes of Henry Moore, Tony Caro and Elisabeth Frink during the mid-20th century, Simon Erland has followed in his family’s footsteps as a full-time practicing sculptor. Like his mother, Erland’s earlier years were heavily reflective of a family love of horses, with the key highlight of these years having been his placement as the key equestrian sculptor following the death of John Skeaping R.A. L.G., into at Arthur Ackermann & Son, London (the established Mayfair gallery that ran from 1830 to the early 1990s). In Erland’s earlier years the pieces were indicative of his background of English show jumping cross-country riding events.

Following an invitation Hans Hiegler of the Spanish Riding School, Erland spent every summer in Vienna for a number of years, training in the dressage tradition. Such riding naturally influenced his work, and, much in line with the School’s commitment to hand-down the riding techniques generation upon generation, this thinking is displayed in a  popular bronze, Conversation. The piece presents an old horse, a young horse, an old rider and a young rider. As if the young rider asks how he might he achieve the skill and ease of the experienced horse & rider, the sculptor presents the relationships between the student and rider, or the apprentice and teacher, presenting a staging of metaphors for the viewer to interpret.

Although Erland continues to work with the horse subject from time to time, with continued demand and following numerous successes in the auction room, he shifted focus in the mid-1990s to the age-old theme of the Spanish bullfight. In 2000 the artist had an international exhibition of bull work (initiating in the USA in both New York and Kentucky, and then traveling to Madrid, Spain, before going on a touring exhibition of Spanish banks). Several works in the exhibition depicted bronze maquettes for full life-sized bulls that now reside on the ranches (fincas) of the premiere Spanish bullfighting families, including Juan Pedro Domecq, Miura and Victorino. The full body of bull work contains a strong conceptual slant, bringing to light concepts of the bullfight– for instance, Full circle, in out, no longer knowing, loss of conscience is worse than loss of life??

Erland’s most recent body of work, The Old Man and the Sea, has retained the artist’s striking ability of form with detailed modeling of the human portrait, and has brought the conceptual to the forefront by wall-mounting the heads with text displayed underneath each portrait, presenting the artist’s interpretation of varying aspects of Hemingway’s novella, The Old Man and the Sea. (The link between the bull sculptures and Hemingway’s work is the writer’s passion for the Spanish bull fight.) The first of the Old