WHITEABBEY artist John Sherlock who was awarded the OBE in the Birthday Honours List 2009, received his accolade at Buckingham Palace on Friday.
A former lecturer in art and successful businessman, John is a council member and Honorary Secretary of the Royal Ulster Academy of Arts (RUA). He is one of Northern Ireland's leading sculptors and an internationally recognised artist.
John was educ
ated at St Columb's College, and graduated from Belfast and Liverpool Colleges of Art.
He studied and travelled widely in Europe and America and lectured in art at St Joseph's Teacher Training College. Subsequent involvement in architecture and interior design led to a successful business career in property and hotel development.
Since retirement, John has been fully involved in his art and has created extensive studio and foundry facilities at his Whiteabbey home overlooking Belfast Lough.
His work in metal, stone, wax and bronze is much admired, and included in many public and private collections throughout Ireland and abroad.
John has specialised in two areas of sculpture in recent years - Portrait Busts and Public Sculpture.
His portraits include bronze busts of John Hume, Dame Mary Peters, Monsignor Denis Faul, Paddy Hunt, Abbess Oliver Martin, the poet Louis MacNeice and many others.
John's public commissions include a life-size bronze sculpture of the late Professor Frank Pantridge, the inventor of the cardiac defibrillator, which is installed outside Lisburn City Council's Island Centre offices.
The RUC George Cross Foundation commissioned John to create a large bronze to commemorate the special relationship between The RUC and the FBI. This was unveiled in FBI Headquarters in Quantico Washington DC in June 2007.
Last year John completed a life-size bronze of the Ulster inventor Harry Ferguson, which is installed in the Memorial Garden at Annahilt outside Lisburn.
John's current works in progress include a major work of Olympic Decathlon gold medallist Dame Mary Peters, destined for Portadown town centre; a bronze commemorating 'The Belfast Blitz' for the Belfast War Memorial Building, and a 'heroic-size' sculpture for Lisburn City Centre to mark the contribution to the province of the Ulster Defence Regiment.
