Found a really good read on Henry Moore and his work by the man himself. Here are some quotes/extracts that I find useful for my thesis :
A piece of stone can have a hole through it and not be weakened – if the hole is of a studied size, shape and direction. On the principle of the arch, it can remain just as strong.
The first hole made through a piece of stone is a revelation.
The hole connects one side to the other, making it immediately more three-dimensional.
A hole can itself have as much shape-meaning as a solid mass.
As far as my own experience is concerned, I sometimes begin a drawing with no preconceived problem to solve, with only the desire to use pencil on paper, and make lines, tones and shapes with no conscious aim; but as my mind takes in what is so produced, a point arrives where some idea becomes conscious and crystallises, and then a control and ordering begin to take place.
It might seem from what I have said of shape and form that I regard them as ends in themselves. Far from it. I am very much aware that associational psychological factors play a large part in sculpture.
All good art has contained both abstract and surrealist elements, just as it has contained both classical and romantic elements – order and surprise, intellect and imagination, conscious and unconscious. Both sides of the artist’s personality must play their part.
Henry Moore, ‘The Sculptor Speaks’, in Listener, 18 August 1937, pp.338–40, in Henry Moore: Sculptural Process and Public Identity, Tate Research Publication, 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/henry-moore/henry-moore-the-sculptor-speaks-r1176118, accessed 21 August 2019.
td @ ual 