She has been lucky enough to collaborate with some of the UK’s leading large-scale metal artists including the Mutoid Waste Co with whom she created pieces as large as twenty-six metres wide for the main stage at Glastonbury. She has also worked on a project for the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert and was part of the team who built the large-scale installations for London’s Paralympic closing ceremony in 2012.
Working in the public domain is important to Felicity. She believes that making our streets and public spaces more creative and vibrant places to be is vitally important for people’s well being.
“I want my work to shine some love and beauty into the everyday experience, a glimpse by a passer by or chance encounter that makes someone smile and realise creative possibilities are endless!”
She has been commissioned twice by Walk the Plank, the UK’s largest outdoor arts specialists and if she had her way the streets would be full of sculptural metalwork, plants and multimedia installations.
She lives on her ninety-year-old barge on the River Lee with her dog, Cosmo and works from her vibrant workshop in Hackney, East London.
She truly loves her job and creates each of her pieces with passion and enthusiasm. The design process is just as important to her as the practical stage of her work and she enjoys working closely with clients to fulfil their functional and aesthetic needs as well as taking great pleasure in imagining and realising her own creative visions.
Felicity creates organic, flowing forms that intersect with an element of danger, taking inspiration from insects, plants, symmetry in nature and man-made artefacts such as vehicle parts and machinery. She uses a mixture of traditional and contemporary techniques to form modern art works.
Her first creative outlets were drawing and painting, inspired by her father, a car designer and an avid painter. After leaving school she completed a foundation in Art and Design at Leeds College of Art where her interest turned to photography, which she pursued for her BA at the London College of Printing.
Once she graduated, her keen eye for capturing the moment in both natural and urban environments took her travelling around the world. Life on the road meant living in some eccentric dwellings that demanded innovation and imagination to maintain. Most of these were vehicles and, out of necessity, Felicity learned to weld; it was these experiences that fostered her burgeoning relationship with metal.
The growing desire to express herself creatively through metal drove Felicity to take her N.Dip. In Blacksmithing and Metal Working, for which she was awarded a distinction at the Hereford College of Technology, home of the UK’s leading metalworking program.
Her favourite artist is Mother Nature but she also loves the sketches of Ernst Haeckel and Gaudi’s architecture. She works in iron, steel, stainless steel, aluminium and copper, creating both functional and sculptural pieces for the home, the garden, for narrow boats, exhibitions, festivals and for the public domain.
“I love the fact you can manipulate metals into almost any form while they keep their strength”, she says, “Through a hands-on, physical process you develop an intimate relationship with the piece you're working on”.
The preservation of the environment is also important to Felicity and she enjoys working with recycled metal and upcycles whenever possible.
She likes to play with the shapes of disused old tools and motor parts to create interesting textures and forms in her pieces.