Greek goddesses look down from on high and fragments of familiar faces lie abandoned on shelves, but it is the head of one of Scotland’s leading composers that is dominating the room. The Paisley studio of the sculptor Sandy Stoddart commemorates some of Scotland’s leading intellectuals, artists and educators alongside assorted divinities. This week he will unveil the latest in a line of commemorative busts.

His James MacMillan, a likeness of the avant-garde composer complete with trademark designer stubble, is a breakthrough for the sculptor. In keeping with MacMillan’s chosen art form, the head, which Stoddart will unveil at Paisley University on Tuesday, is framed by an Orphean lyre. And while the bust is a tribute to the musician it is also a chance for Stoddart to return to a fascinating theme.

He has been preoccupied with Orpheus for more than 30 years. As a child he pored over the story of the Athenian musician who descended into the underworld with his lyre to rescue his wife. He gazed endlessly at vivid Victorian illustrations of the musician whose body was finally torn to pieces and thrown into the river where it fused with his harp.

At Glasgow School of Art the images of Orpheus continued to haunt him. It was there that he first produced drawings of the classical head, fused with the ancient Greek harp.

In the past decade, Stoddart has emerged as one of Scotland’s most successful artists. A 15ft sculpture of David Hume commissioned by the city of Edinburgh for £120,000 in 1994 was overshadowed in 2002 by a royal commission for a £350,000 frieze for the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace.

The sculptor’s latest work is certain to raise his profile further. “It is perhaps one of the strangest but most important works I have ever made,” he says. “I have been wrestling with the problem of the head set within the lyre for 25 years.

“There are certain types of people who are enthralled by myths and for those people the story of Orpheus is one that always stays with them.”

Stoddart says he has always been attracted to the work of the complex and highly acclaimed composer. “Music is the super art, the greatest of all arts. It is the only one that is unmeditated — that is the miracle of it. You cannot describe music in words,” he says. “That is why this sculpture is not about MacMillan’s music but about his place in the world as a great artist.”

Perhaps, he confesses, it was also MacMillan’s controversial reputation that inspired him. “I set out to say something about our reaction to the artist. In the Orpheus myth the musician is torn apart and thrown away. Today we live in a Philistine world, that also attacks high culture. The artist today is in trouble.”

MacMillan has been stringent in his attacks on the “Philistine” Scottish Establishment. He is well known for his robust defence of Scottish Opera and his frequent calls for management heads to roll over what he perceives as its lack of adequate funding.

“Neither MacMillan nor I are seen as artists who are willing to ‘take part’ — we don’t share the consensus view — so we work outside the Establishment,” says Stoddart. “From that point of view, I suppose this work is also, in part, an auto- portrait.”

But with commissions flooding in and his works attracting five-figure sums, Stoddart might find it hard to argue that he is truly being “punished” for his approach.

The sculptor, who grow up in Elderslie before moving to Paisley, where he still lives, has achieved a degree of success that not so long ago must have seemed outwith his grasp. He has recently completed a bust of John Byrne, the Scottish artist and writer, for Paisley University, where he is artist in residence, and has a number of other commissions in the pipeline.

He has started work on a sculpture of Adam Smith, the 18th-century economist and philosopher. Commissioned by the Adam Smith Institute, the piece will join Stoddart’s sculpture of Hume on the Royal Mile.

But it is in America that Stoddart has really come into his own. In 2003 he beat off international competition to win the contract to design a £6m millennium arch in Atlanta.

Since his appointment, his reputation there has flourished. One of the most exciting commissions for Stoddart is a request from a Catholic seminary in Chicago for a bust of Pope John Paul II.

“I’ve always considered myself as a religious artist, but without any theological confinement. I was brought up in the Baptist tradition, I’m interested in Hindu teachings and I have more of less devoted my life to the depiction of the Greek gods,” he explains.

Other than an admiration for the Polish pope, who died last month, he has no strong connection to Catholicism. “I think the subject will be better done by someone outside of the Catholic tradition than within it,” he says, with an air of mischief.

Certainly, his confidence is matched by the architects working with him on the new seminary building. Michael Francks of Washington practice Franck Lohsen and McCrery describes Stoddart as “one of our all-time international greats” and “the Leonardo of his time”.

But though praise rolls in the US, back in his Paisley studio he claims he still struggles to get the attention of the Scottish Establishment. “They just don’t look far enough — they take an extremely provincial view.”

But he has not yet given up. “I keep hoping, I keep working and maybe I am getting closer to that day.”

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