HAMISH MACKIE
My friend Hamish really does have quite a fantasy life. Living in a beautiful part of the Cotswolds, he is, in my opinion, the preeminent British sculptor of wild
animals. I preface the words “in my opinion” because Hamish is an affable self-deprecating Englishman. So, he insists my claim is a barefaced lie. But I stand resolutely by my statement. His work is simply breathtaking. And all of his extraordinary creations are designed, born and crafted from the studio in his garden.
How it all came about though, is quite a remarkable story. A splendid example of 1970s Cornish education at it’s finest. As a young child his teachers treated him being left-handed and having a lazy eye with what any forward thinking educational leader would have done at the time. They tied his left hand behind his back and forced him to wear an eye patch. They obviously hadn’t seen The Kings Speech movie at that time.
But unlike King George VI’s reaction to similar treatment which caused his stammer, Hamish’s brain’s reaction was to start writing in mirror writing. Which is, you could only read what he had written by looking at it in a mirror.
Unsurprisingly, this didn’t give him a huge academic leg up, but as he was growing up on a Cornish livestock farm surrounded by animals and countryside, he busied himself instead with making stuff from whatever he could lay his hands on. Kids take note – good honest creativity and not a smartphone in sight.
Then on to senior school and A-Levels. “I wanted to do A Level Art, Design and History of Art. But my father turned round to the school and said that there’s no way I’m paying these school fees to do three dossy subjects. He’s got to do one proper subject. So, I did Physics rather than History of Art. And actually, the physics ended up being really useful because I put a lot of what I learnt into the engineering of my sculptures. It was a blessing in disguise.”
Hamish failed to join the British Army – the old mirror writing not so handy for dishing out bombing coordinates to your colleagues - so headed off to Africa instead to see some animals more exotic than could be found on the Cornish farm. It was here that he ended up on a wildlife conservatioconservancy in Kenya, involved in relocating wild dogs and black rhino. Getting to see these fine creatures up close inspired his love of sculpture.
He must have some fairly prodigious talent because as an 18 year old, he met the owner of the Lockbund Foundry in Banbury who was so impressed by Hamish’s work, he promised to cover the costs of any sculpture Hamish wanted to cast into bronze. And he didn’t have to pay him until he sold it. That leap of faith has resulted in a 30+ year relationship which continues to this day. That is a story of inspiration and trust which brings a tear to one’s eye.
Wind the clock forward, Hamish has had commissions from pretty much all over the world, in particular the US (fingers crossed, Trump being the high-brow lover of creative arts that he is ahem, sculpture is currently exempt from tariffs). And one of the reasons why Hamish’s work is in such demand is that he creates his pieces in a very old and rarely used process called The Lost Wax process.
A brief attempt at an idiots’ guide to this lost wax casting method is as follows:
You make a positive original – that is the ‘thing’. Could be made from clay, wood, plaster of Paris, stone. Whatever is your area of skill. You then make a negative rubber mould from it which gives you a negative. Then you fill this rubber mould with liquid wax to get you back to a positive wax ‘thing’. So, you go positive original, negative mould, positive wax.
With me so far?
You then cover the wax ‘thing’ in ceramic and bake it. The baking process does two things. It fires the ceramic and it melts the wax out. This is where the term ‘Lost Wax’ comes from. Get it?
You then melt your bronze at 1160 degrees, pour it into the hole where the wax came out and finally, you’re at a positive bronze ‘thing’. Chip off the ceramic and hey presto, you have a bronze sculpture. Simple as that!
Why go through all of this convoluted procedure? Because what is so special about the Lost Wax casting process is that it captures so much detail. If you stuck your finger into a piece of wet clay and left a finger print, you would capture that level of detail in the bronze.
And this is where we finally get to the nub of why Hamish is the preeminent British wildlife sculptor. Because it is the combination of his extraordinary eye for detail and character in the animals that he sculpts, combined with the very rarely used Lost Wax process which creates the finished product. However large or small, Hamish is able to communicate the animal’s character in a way which AI can’t and never will. With AI you can make a millimetre perfect model. But AI can’t interpret what that animal’s spirit is all about and then get that spirit to come out through the clay.
It's why music on vinyl still sounds better than music on Spotify.
I met up with Hamish just after he’d been on a long trip to the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania. “We flew in and had a guide called Joel with an idea to travel round the camps and see how the Nomad operate. But Joel knew where all the lion and leopard hung out and exactly what time to see them. Leopards are particularly hard to find and get close to but Joel was so good, every time we turned, we saw another lion or another leopard.”
“Seeing them in the natural habitat is how I can properly understand the animal. And that’s how I can create the personality in the eye. Being there in the field allows me to make what’s called a maquette – a quick rough draft of what I then go on to make back home in my studio.”
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We are having this chat in Hamish’s studio standing next to a massive sculpture of an eagle. It was made for an American client in Maine. Hamish photographed it in action and then came up with a composition as to what he wanted the eagle to be doing. And this is one seriously big bugger, it's stone base weighing a tonne, literally. Which gets us finally to why I’m really here. To see Hamish’s bright yellow 1967 Massey Ferguson 203 diesel tractor. The fine agricultural beast he uses to move the sculptures around his yard.
If you’re lucky enough to have some Chelsea Flower Show tickets for later this month, do pay Hamish a visit. Sadly, his tractor won’t be there, but his sculptures will more than make up for that.
