"Until the interest of an artist shifts from the personal sensation to a sense of communal service his work cannot grow. As pure artist his work maybe technically more perfect in the exploitation of the ego - but it cannot take on real greatness until it bears the burden of a people." Wm. Soutar, poet, Perth 9th August 1932 'Nae Day Sae Dark' in Perth High Street is one of Annand’s best known pieces. This powerful testimony to the work of the poet William Soutar shows the potential of his technical and aesthetic experience. It answers the demanding criteria of public-art, thus combining heavy engineering, street furniture, local history, poetry, even irony and despair. As a composition it is as tight as the poem itself and equally accessible; important factors in both their philosophies. "My work has grown out of a tradition of figurative representation exploiting the plasticity of clay. It deals with vitality, balance, gravity and irony. It is very important that my work should remain accessible to everyone i.e. realistic human or animal subjects, observed and modelled with discipline, set in a slightly incongruous composition, using the site as a plinth and often involving an abstract element in the composition. Think of a Richard Thompson song. It can be sentimental or traditional but then it is spiked with a guitar solo that is so abstract it is at the very edge of the genre. I wish I could achieve this in my sculpture. Everything is abstract. Looking back at my sculpture you'd think I am obsessed with giving gravity a hard time and taking my materials to the limit. It's easy enough to make life-like sculptures, but, by nudging them off balance, in an awkward place - it makes them vulnerable, precarious; they get an urgency to be alive." Powderhall Bronze & David A Annand in Partnership This partnership has evolved to combine the modelling skills and aesthetic potential of the sculptor with the well established skills of the Powderhall Bronze foundry. Because the sculptor can work as part of the foundry team and not just as their client, the partnership provides the customer with the opportunity to realise a commission which gives, if nothing, maximum volume of bronze within a given budget. This partnership means, that from its conception an idea can be tailored to avoid casting problems with the inevitable added expense and to ensure an excellent and enduring product. The combination of bronze and clay offers the sculptor so much more freedom and choice than other materials. Without doubt bronze is the best medium for public art, it has a tradition dating back to ancient history, it matures with time and endures in the harshest of environments.

© David Annand