An interview with

Paul and Jason Skellett

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Paul:

For us, sculpture has always been about storytelling. Growing up as brothers, we spent countless hours exploring what it means to be human—its beauty, frailty, grace, pain, and power. Those quiet conversations, often unspoken but deeply understood, now live in the work we create. Every sculpture carries a piece of that exploration, a reflection of something we’re still trying to grasp ourselves.  

 

Jason:

We work side by side, always pushing each other forward. There’s something instinctive in the way we create—an ebb and flow that allows our ideas to merge and diverge, shaping pieces that feel deeply personal yet somehow universal. Our figures don’t aim to be perfect or polished; instead, they embrace the cracks, the imperfections, the fleeting moments of strength or vulnerability that make us who we are.  

 

Paul:

But there’s another layer to our work, something we rarely discuss outside the studio. We have always seen random faces that visit our subconscious. They come to us unbidden, usually when our pain is bad or we’re feeling stressed. We never really spoke of it about us having a mediumship experience., we just put it down to a healthy imagination.

It was a mystic, an old guy from Morocco, whom we met by chance at ‘Tribal Art London’, he seemed to know us even though we’d never met before. It was he who clarified what we had been experiencing all of our lives … the ability to see faces from ‘the other side’. “It runs in you,” he told us. “You see them because you are meant to,”  he said. By all accounts, his family had carried this ‘gift’ for more than 400 years. We made light of it at the time, but on reflection, he helped us make sense of what we had long struggled to explain about us being driven to become artists.  Just maybe the faces of the souls we capture in our sculptures reflect not only our own struggles with pain but also those of others seeking resolution from beyond the physical. In the end, we are all just trying to be heard or recognised in both life and, possibly, death?”

 

Jason:

It is not something we control. We don’t summon these faces; they arrive, lingering at the edge of our sight, I guess waiting for form. So, we sculpt them, not as ghosts or visions but as echoes of something deeper. I suppose they are the ones who shape themselves in our hands as if they have always been waiting for someone to carve them into being… either again or for the first time. Who knows, we just roll with what is put before us?”  

 

Paul:

We don’t engage in the ‘believer/sceptic’ war. Instead, we do what artists are supposed to do: tell a story through our chosen medium (no pun intended).

 

Jason:

The connection people feel to our pieces means everything to us. If someone sees themselves or someone they love in our work, then we feel we’ve done something worthwhile.  

Being considered "up and coming" is humbling. We’re just focused on staying true to the work and letting it evolve. The idea of bringing our sculptures to exhibitions and ceramics fairs is exciting because events like these are spaces for discovery, connection, and conversation. We love being chosen to share our work with people who resonate with what we do, creating a wider dialogue about what art can be and how the stories within it can be translated.