Stephen Kettle (born 12 July 1966, in Castle Bromwich,

Warwickshire Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, and the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon an ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

) is a British

sculptor Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable ...

who works exclusively with

slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic ro ...

Career

Kettle is a self-taught sculptor with no formal training. His best known works include

Supermarine Spitfire The Supermarine Spitfire is a British single-seat fighter aircraft used by the Royal Air Force and other Allies of World War II, Allied countries before, during, and after World War II. Many variants of the Spitfire were built, from the Mk 1 ...

designer

R. J. Mitchell Reginald Joseph Mitchell (20 May 189511 June 1937) was a British aircraft designer who worked for the Southampton aviation company Supermarine from 1916 until 1936. He is best remembered for designing racing seaplanes such as the Supermari ...

, commissioned for the Science Museum in London, which was the first statue of its type in the world, and a life size Statue of Alan Turing, the founder of

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includin ...

and Enigma codebreaker, commissioned by the American philanthropist Sidney Frank for

Bletchley Park Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes (Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years following ...

Buckinghamshire Buckinghamshire (), abbreviated Bucks, is a ceremonial county in South East England that borders Greater London to the south-east, Berkshire to the south, Oxfordshire to the west, Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-eas ...

. Besides Turing and Mitchell, other notable portrait busts include: * George Zambellas, first sea lord at RNAS Yeovilton * Winston Churchill in Buckingham Palace * Frederick Barclay at the London Ritz * Donald Gosling * Ronald Hobson * a double portrait of the

Prince of Wales Prince of Wales ( cy, Tywysog Cymru, ; la, Princeps Cambriae/Walliae) is a title traditionally given to the heir apparent to the English and later British throne. Prior to the conquest by Edward I in the 13th century, it was used by the rule ...

and the Duchess of Cornwall in the grounds of Highgrove House in Gloucestershire.

Personal life

Kettle lives with his wife and three children in west

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

References

1966 births Living people People from Castle Bromwich 20th-century British sculptors 21st-century British sculptors 21st-century male artists English male sculptors Slate {{UK-sculptor-stub