A foundry worker finds his inner artist and puts it all on show

The artist, a once-pattern maker at Launceston Foundry and now full-time sculptor and metal-worker, looked to where the river - really just shining stainless steel - joins the sheet of rust-coloured corten steel he'd melded it to.

"Once upon a time, I'd have worked tirelessly to hide all the welds," he said, pointing out the bubbled silver banks that constitute the artwork's dual appearance as a scar-tissue and topography.

"Any boilermaker worth his salt would look at it and shudder; so I'd try to get them 'good'. But this, [the welds], is the artistry. I'm celebrating it for what it is."

This week, McLaren's workshop is replete with his own artistry as he prepares for his upcoming show, Winter's Embrace: A Fusion of Steel, Light and Fire, opening at Blenheim Gallery this Friday.

The 12, mostly-completed sculptures (McLaren has been fastidiously perfecting them even up to two days before the show) are reflections of an eight-year journey; two of those as a full-time artist.

"I've progressed more into the artistic side," McLaren said.

"I still have my commercial work - making bird baths for people and run of the mill things; mostly on the mainland - and then this is letting loose. People will look at this work and say, 'woah, you've really let go'. But in a good way."

The range of work in Winter Embrace incorporates figures, like classic obelisks on scrolled plinths and jellyfish, and more abstract pieces, like the corten steel with stainless rivers on canvas-like sheets of metal.

Each has a touch of the exhibition's overall theme: the "composed" world of buildings that will, inevitably, decompose, inspired by crumbling buildings McLaren witnessed in overseas trips.

But, despite the heady technical aspects of the work, and their artistic leanings, McLaren still has the jovial workman's attitude. He laughs heartily describing his process and clearly revels in its manufacturing.

Rather than detracting from the work, making it either "boilermaker" precise or too philosophical, there is a matching of his two artisanal personalities. The pattern-maker meets the artist in the middle.

Looking at the abstract, metal river piece again, he joked about the construction.

"I get wound up in the materials," he said.

"I thought about having the background be flat, as if I was doing a project, but I know when you start welding it does this kind of 'electric boogaloo'. So, rather than trying to fix that, I want to celebrate the material."

After walking around his workshop some more, he keeps on the art-led train-of-thought.

"There are these two questions people ask you as an artist," McLaren said.

"Number one: How long did that take you? And you can see the mental arithmetic going on as they look at the price tag. Sure - there are hours in the metal, but there are years of thinking about it.

"The second one is inspiration. Sometimes I can't tell you where it comes from; it just happens and you get in the shop and you start tinkering."

He gestures to most of the pieces in Embrace, indicating that they were made in just that spur of the moment fashion.

"And that's often the best work."