The human form is a fascinating subject for sculpture and one I have only recently focused on; I love the sense of movement and the ability to convey emotion. At first I just concentrated on the head with sculptures like Search for Enlightenment and Leaf Spirit. Then I moved onto the full human form and used ballet as my inspiration. The first stage is to create a maquette, which I do in a more traditional style, although with a contemporary and flowing base. However, I wanted to create something with a more ethereal quality that had a delicacy which reflected the elegance of the ballerina as well as the beauty of the performance.

I started the piece by spending some time working on poses with Ksenia Ovsyanick, the principal ballerina with the Staatsballett, Berlin. With Athena I thought I had decided on a pose and then at the end of the day we played the music from Saint-Saëns’s cello solo, Le Cygne, which Michel Foline had used as the musical basis to create the solo ballet performance The Dying Swan for Anna Pavlova. As the ballerina danced the Dying Swan I was mesmerised by the elegance and grace and then I saw the pose I wanted to use.

One of Britain’s leading contemporary sculptors, Simon Gudgeon has a signature smooth style that marvellously concentrates spirit and nature. His minimalist, semi-abstract forms depict both movement and emotion of a moment captured with a visual harmony that is unmistakably his own.