Alexander Stoddart

In 2019 Stoddart was working on a 14ft tall statue of Leon Battista Alberti for the new architecture building of the University of Notre Dame, in the United States. It will be his single tallest work.

Stoddart himself outspoken about Modernism, and its contemporary failures and historical misunderstandings, without hesitation, makes clear that his work stems from a Modernism born in neo-classicism, "And yet, after having said all this about Modernism, I consider myself a Modernist – but in the context of a vast application of the term extending miles beyond the pokey wee official area to which usually it is confined. For in truth there are really two kinds of Modernism to be uncovered in the space of the last two and a half centuries, and it is to the first and largest of these that I belong and to which, in my small way, I contribute. This is the Modernism that was born in neo-classicism and has, as its great central titan, the mighty Richard Wagner."

In 2012, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Stoddart works within the neo-classical tradition of art, and believes that greatness and respect for posterity are important considerations. In 2010 he rebuffed a query about his interest in sculpting a memorial to Bill McLaren, a rugby union broadcaster: "I do not do sportsmen and I certainly do not do sports commentators. I do artists, philosophers and poets", he said, warning that memorials are often hastily erected. Advocates of the memorial described the remarks as insensitive, and said that "To have Bill looking down on the fans at Murrayfield, microphone in hand, would bring a huge smile to so many faces."

He is an Honorary Professor at the University of the West of Scotland. On 30 December 2008, it was announced that Stoddart had been appointed Her Majesty's Sculptor in Ordinary in Scotland.

He developed an interest in music at school, where he learned to play the piano, which he still does daily. He called his own medium, sculpture "an art inferior to the super-art of music" and nominated Wagner as the greatest composer. Stoddart developed his theme on the quietism of monumental art and its relation to Schopenhaurian resignation in a lecture to the Wagner Society of Scotland on 2 March 2008.

Smith, a philosopher who forged the new discipline of economics, is, by contrast, depicted in contemporary attire, showing his concern for the practical matters of economic activity, a gown draped over his shoulder retains the connection to philosophy and academia. Smith's economic ideas are also encoded into the statue: the plough behind him represents the agrarian economics he supplanted, the beehive before, is a symbol of the industry he predicted would come. His hand, resting on a globe, is obscured by the gown: a literal presentation of Smith's famous metaphor of the invisible hand. The life-and-a-half size statue of Smith, is cast in bronze from a plaster model by the sculptor and was unveiled in 2008. It was funded by private subscriptions organised by the Adam Smith Institute.

McKenzie, R. Public Sculpture of Glasgow. Liverpool University Press, 2001. ISBN 0853239371

During 2000 to 2002 the Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace was renovated in the neo-classical style under the direction of John Simpson, envisioned as "building visible history". For the walls in the two-storied entrance hall, Stoddart made architectural friezes which interpret Homeric themes in twentieth century Britain. For the Sackler Library in Oxford University, he made a 6 feet (1.8 m) by 25 feet (7.6 m) bronze frieze, depicting an allegory of traditionalist and modernist values. Stoddart has also worked on busts of living figures whom he admires, often fellow-classicists including Roger Scruton, a philosopher, Robert Adam and John Simpson, architects, the architectural historian David Watkin, and Tony Benn, the politician.

He has made sculptures of David Hume and Adam Smith, philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, which stand in the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. Hume is depicted in a philosopher's toga, representing the timelessness of philosophical thought, a decision which was criticised as atavistic after the unveiling in 1996, though Stoddart remained stoic, "So here I discovered that the right thing, done in public, will often earn one great disapproval: a lesson for life – in the modern age at least." Local philosophy students soon began a tradition of rubbing the statue's toe to absorb some of his knowledge. Though Stoddart placed the foot over the edge of the plinth to encourage such engagement, the irony of the practice given Hume's critiques of superstition has been remarked upon.

Heroic Bust, Henry Moore by Alexander Stoddart 1992

Stoddart wrote his undergraduate thesis on the life and work of John Mossman, an English sculptor who worked in Scotland for fifty years. His work remains an influence on Stoddart. Stoddart graduated in 1980 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, first class, though he was demoralised by his peers' ignorance of art history: "the name Raphael meant nothing to them". He went on to read History of Art at the University of Glasgow. Afterwards, he worked for six "difficult" years in the studio of Ian Hamilton Finlay. Although Hamilton Finlay is considered one of the most important Scottish artists of the 20th century, Stoddart profoundly disagrees with his working methods: "Finlay was the godfather of a problem that's rampant everywhere today. He called the people who made his work 'collaborators'. What we call them nowadays is 'fabricators'. They're talented people who are plastically capable, but they never meet their 'artist'. They're grateful, desperate and thwarted."

Stoddart was born in Edinburgh and raised in Renfrewshire, where he developed an early interest in the arts and music, and later trained in fine art at the Glasgow School of Art (1976–1980) and read the History of Art at the University of Glasgow. During this time he became increasingly critical of contemporary trends in art, such as pop art, and concentrated on creating figurine pieces in clay. Stoddart associates the lack of form in modern art with social decay; in contrast, his works include many classical allusions.

Stoddart went, aged seventeen, to train in fine art at the Glasgow School of Art where he studied from 1976 to 1980. There he settled on sculpture and initially worked within the modernist idiom. Stoddart has recalled an epiphany moment several times: when, after finishing a riveted metal pop-art sculpture (praised by his tutors) he found a bust of the Apollo Belvedere, "I thought my pop-riveted thing was rubbish by comparison. It's extraordinarily easy to pop-rivet two bits of metal together and extraordinarily difficult to make a figure like the Apollo, but I thought I had to try."

Alexander "Sandy" Stoddart FRSE (born 1959) is a Scottish sculptor, who, since 2008, has been the Queen's Sculptor in Ordinary in Scotland. He works primarily on figurative sculpture in clay within the neoclassical tradition. Stoddart is best known for his civic monuments, including 10 feet (3.0 m) bronze statues of David Hume and Adam Smith, philosophers during the Scottish Enlightenment, on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, and others of James Clerk Maxwell, William Henry Playfair and John Witherspoon. Stoddart says of his own motivation, "My great ambition is to do sculpture for Scotland", primarily through large civic monuments to figures from the country's past.