During World War II Frink witnessed war planes crashing into the fields near her grandparents’ home in Suffolk (where she spent much of the war) - their wreckages, appearing to the young Frink as broken-winged creatures of war. During the decades that followed the war Frink was to process these childhood memories and the sense they left her with of man’s brutality, but also his ultimate vulnerability.  

Later in life, and revealingly, Frink told Edward Lucie-Smith; “I’ve had a flight dream from the time I was very young. It’s to do with birds flying, planes crashing - big monstrous things flying, sometimes with a man in them”. 

Frink has Winged Figure III purposely pitched forward, almost to the tipping point of the sculpture, thus giving a sense of the figure about to attempt flight; an ambition that is clearly doomed to fail given the inadequacy of his wings. A metaphor for how Frink saw all wars; the product of man's ultimately doomed and foolish ambition.