CLUN-based sculptor Jemma Pearson is looking forward to her most exciting challenge yet, a life-sized statue in bronze of England's greatest composer Sir Edward Elgar, and after a good deal of searching she has found a local man to model for the statue.

He will pose as Sir Edward in authentic costume supplied by a London theatrical costume company, writes Jen Green.

Commissioned by the Elgar in Hereford Group to commemorate his arrival in Hereford City in 1904, Mrs Pearson is delighted to have been selected from a field of 40 sculptors who entered the prestigious competition.

She said: "This is my most demanding and creative challenge yet. I have extensively researched Elgar's working and private lives, his clothes, his mannerisms, his music and, of course, his trade mark bicycle; I will soon be looking for the exact model of the one he pedalled around Hereford while composing music in his head."

Born in Liverpool in 1960, Jemma grew up in Galloway in Scotland, a place renowned for its artistic inspiration. She first studied at Oxford, from there she moved on to Cambridge College of Arts and Technology, and the City and Guilds of London Art School.

In 1985, she completed her formal training, gaining a Higher Diploma in Sculpture, and capturing the Madame Tussaud's Sculpture Prize, the highest accolade for her graduating year. Her broad range of work has been featured in exhibitions at home and abroad.

For some years, Jemma worked at her studio in Hackney, East London, but when she married her husband Richard, an officer in The Light Infantry, she followed an army life before settling down in the Marches with Richard and their two young sons, Edward and George.

Tom Pellow, chairman of the Elgar in Hereford Group, said: "From the 40 sculptors drawn from across the United Kingdom and Eire, we asked four to submit proposals under nom de plumes.

"Jemma Pearson impressed us with the quality of her work and careful research into Elgar the man and the corresponding sensitivity to him shown in her proposal. The committee unanimously agreed with the response from the public exhibition in April last year that the commission should go to her.

"The originality and the suitability of her bicycle pose for Hereford is reflective of Elgar's life in and around the city," he added.

Expected to cost around £40,000, the Elgar statue will be appropriately sited in the City of Hereford and will be Mrs Pearson's first work for public display.

Carved into the stone base will be: 'This is what I hear all day - the trees are singing my music - or have I sung their's?'

Out of this music came Elgar's oratorio, Caractacus.

The bronze statue will remind people that a great English composer lived here.