Rowena Easton on the drawings of sculptor John Roberts (1946-2002).

Deep in the forest there is a flint-wall cottage with a sky-blue door. Its gardens are fragrant with apple blossoms. Clouds of forget-me-nots soften tumbledown outbuildings. A dovecote stands sentry where a gate leads into the trees. Snow-white doves flutter down to bob among the bluebells. A young woman sits on the grass. She is made of stone.

This was the Sussex retreat of sculptor John Roberts, where he stayed with his companion, the sculptor Silvia MacRae Brown, and where he came to die. He was 56. Silvia (the stone woman) lives there still and she shows me the tiny room, deep in shadow, by the back door, where she nursed him. And where she welcomes me inside with a glass of fresh orange juice.

“Nature, walking in nature, was very important to him,” she tells me. I’ve followed her up a short, steep set of stairs to another tiny room stacked with drawings, where she hands me an exquisite foliate sketch. There is almost too much to look at. Roberts was a prolific and preternaturally gifted draughtsman who was constantly observing and drawing. “He was always looking.” I sift through sketches of figures, faces and frondescence, of heads and hares, of birds and bone-like abstract forms. “He did a life class every Saturday. It was part of the discipline of drawing, which was central to his work.” Silvia points to a quote of his in an exhibition catalogue as the key to understanding his sculpture

‘I usually start by drawing, and this translates to the cutting action of the chisel, shaping contours in space. The work should spring out of a search for truth and communicate its meaning without words.’

We admire a striking head enveloped in snake-like forms executed in red chalk. “He was very interested in heads. Heads more than portraits.” We talk about how his heads and the abstract work he wished he had more time for sometimes interconnect. “They share a search for structure and the connection of forms.” Silvia is delighted to spot another head, this time emerging from the top of an abstract study, that she hadn’t noticed before.

Reading the catalogue produced for the last exhibition of his work (at London’s Smithfield Gallery in 2007), I notice that word again: ‘search’. ‘[It] is a key to his approach to sculpture’, wrote his colleague, the sculptor Dick Onians. ‘His drawings show how he strove to get to the heart of the forms. His constant working over ideas on paper, in stone and in clay was part of the same process.’

I can’t help thinking about Roberts’ search for truth, his ‘always looking’, in terms of loss, both personally and creatively.

Silvia, writing in the catalogue, confirms my intuition: ‘His sense of loss at being orphaned remained with him all his life, and heightened a feeling of solitariness and vulnerability.’ And stone carver Ross Fuller: ‘He sensed the unity of art and craft within a spiritual culture, and suffered deeply for its absence in our time.’

An only child, Roberts was orphaned at eight years old after his parents died within a year of one another. He was brought up in his aunt’s family in Port Talbot, South Wales. From an early age he drew constantly. He studied Art & Design at Gloucester College of Art, specialising in abstract sculpture, before taking up a place at the Royal Academy Schools in 1969. But the self-contained, deeply sensitive, ‘unworldly’ young artist was unable to stand city noise, returning to Wales after just one night. He spent the next few years working as a labourer and in the steel industry.

Roberts returned to London in 1976 to study Wood and Stone Carving at the City & Guilds of London Art School, where he would go on to be a much loved and respected teacher. ‘He learned to be equally at home in wood, stone, lettering, restoration, new commissions, ornament or figures: skills all underpinned by his draughtsmanship,’ observed fellow student Tim Metcalfe.

A prodigious reader, of ‘dusty books on Greek sculpture, on Buddhism, on philosophy, and on Christianity by mystical thinkers’, over his lifetime, he also developed a rare depth of knowledge and understanding of classical and medieval sculpture and decoration. This enabled him to keep alive its traditions, as well to gift us some of the finest modern carving on English ecclesiastical and secular buildings. “You could show him a photo of a little piece of a sculpture and he’d instantly know what it was,” says Silvia, her amazement as fresh as if she’d just handed him that photo.

The late Tony Carter, former City & Guilds Principal, said that Roberts’ ‘extraordinary skill and powers of empathy would conjure the spirit of medieval forms into contemporary life.’ For proof you need only go to the west front of Westminster Abbey and look up at the series of Twentieth Century Martyrs. Three of the life-size limestone figures were carved by Roberts: Bishop Oscar Romero, Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia, and Manche Masemola. The latter is a modern masterpiece; one of the best examples of the way that Roberts’ insight into his medium, combined with the clarity and sensitivity of his line, is transformational. It gives life, even an inner life, to the stone. It is profoundly moving.

Later, Silvia leads me into one of the outbuildings. This is where she works; it is crowded with tall clay forms shrouded in plastic. Tucked onto a shelf at the back, I come face to face with ‘Mask, inspired by Laura’. Next to it, she has placed a photo of Roberts working on the piece. It is extraordinarily beautiful. I don’t want to stop looking.

But there is one last place that Silvia is keen to take me. It is dark, dusty; the most tumbledown barn in the garden. She gestures towards rows of wooden crates stacked to the roof. “They contain his sculptures; they’ve been here nearly twenty years. It’s what inspired the title, Uncrated.” She is talking about a forthcoming exhibition of his work in St Andrews Church, Alfriston, a place she tells me he loved. “The huge, silent space is perfect for his work, and it’s the first time they’ve hosted a sculpture exhibition.” I can sense her excitement (I feel it, too!). Soon this divinely life-affirming art will breathe again.

UNCRATED! Stone Carvings & Drawings by the sculptor John Roberts ARBS (1946-2002) will be exhibited at St Andrew’s Church, Alfriston, from September 7-21, daily 11am-5pm (except Saturday 13, when it is open 3-6pm). Go to artwavefestival.org for details. Find out more at john-roberts-sculptor.com

Photos courtesy of Silvia MacRae Brown Douglas MacRae Brown and Robin Lloyd