Watkins was born in 1899 in Gravesend, Kent. He trained for the Navy while attending part time art classes at Goldsmiths College and Chelsea School of Art. He was commissioned for a series of abstracts by Exhall Grange School in Coventry and a work, Flying Fish, similar to the Pisces but in stainless steel for the Royal London Free Hospital in Hampstead. He was working on a series of abstract sculptures based on the Zodiac in the seventies.
Works
Pisces
1973
Painted steel
213 x 200 x 200 cm
Water Garden, Town Park
Pisces was exhibited in his retrospective of sculpture, paintings and graphics in the newly opened Playhouse. It was shown in maquette form in the gallery as the work was too large for the interior, it was installed in the Water Gardens, in Harlow Town Centre. Sited in the water garden of the Town Park (formerly a watercress bed) it so well suited its surroundings that it was retained by Harlow District Council after the exhibition.
It has become an icon for Harlow.
Pisces was re-cleaned and re-site in the pond and the surrounding edges to the Water Garden cobbled, thanks to a Harlow Council initiative in the summer of 2015.
See Newsletter No 24
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