In what he terms 'imaginative reconstructions', this new series of portrait heads includes depictions of writers, fictional characters, and individuals that William Tucker has encountered throughout his lifetime. These sculptural portraits date back to the end of Covid at a time when mask wearing was common, obscuring people’s identity. Inspired by the question of identity and the specificity of the subject in a portrait, Tucker embarked on new body of works to explore it in a physical sense. With regards to the process of making this body of work, Tucker reveals that the individual works were all originally part of one enormous plaster of a horse – a subject he had previously explored. By cutting it up and making new work out of it, he is symbolically moving on from the past. He also alludes to assemblage and a certain anthropomorphism, sometimes referred to by scientists as pareidolia, which involves a willingness to suspend disbelief to allow figurative forms to take shape: “I was really attracted to these pieces; I started to put them together and these heads started to appear”. Tucker describes this as “a vocabulary of chunks” which, once assembled, seemed to want to become someone, developing into a character.

Renowned American painter Philip Morsberger met William Tucker during his studies at the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford, now part of Oxford University's Fine Art Department. Born in Baltimore, he began his artistic journey at a young age, later studying at the Carnegie Institute of Technology before serving in the military. After marrying and completing his education, he joined the faculty of Miami University before becoming the first American to serve as Ruskin Master in Oxford. His tenure saw the school's relocation and the establishment of a pioneering three-year degree program. While at Oxford, Philip went on two leaves of absence to take up appointments in the US, as a fellow of the Carpenter Centre for Visual Arts, Harvard University (1976), and artist-in-residence at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire (1983). After Oxford, he taught in Minnesota (1984-86) and California (1986-96) before becoming the William S. Morris Eminent Scholar in Art (Artist-in-Residence) at Augusta State University (1996-2002). He gave up teaching in 2002, becoming an emeritus scholar. Throughout his career, Morsberger's art, beyond the politically motivated realist works of the 1960s, was influenced by childhood memories and comic strips, captured imaginations worldwide.