M ichael Hevesi is an artistic dreamer who will need every last second of his allotted three-score years and 10 if he is to achieve his life's ambition.

Indeed, since he's already 57, he would be well advised to pop down to Somerset and get some tips from old soldier Harry Patch on how to stay active for another 50 years or so.

This is the task he's set himself – he designs shadow-casting sculptures, two-dimensional pieces about 4ft-high which are meant for outdoor display, ideally in sunshine.

So far, on his computer, there are 324 such designs grouped together in 17 series, which he calls his children. And this month, the first series of 22 of the works, in steel, is on show in his garden in Chippenham. Only another 16 series to go...

This has already been a long, long trail. His first cut-out sculpture was made when his family was in Barnes in west London in the early Seventies, and he was living in Spain when the next two came along in the mid-Eighties.

Since then about 60 plywood pieces have followed. And now comes the first compete series in steel, laser-cut to his specification by a company in Poole that is more used to making staircases, boxes and gates.

Michael says his work is influenced by the Indonesian Wayang Kulet shadow puppet tradition; he believes nobody else in this country is doing anything like it, and he's doubtless right.

He decorates each one in primary colours to reflect humour on one side and in stark black and white on the other. They are designed to be seen, if not as a full series, at least in a group facing precisely in the same direction.

Whichever way you walk through them, with either colour or monochrome first, to turn at the end and see their contrasting faces is quite an arresting experience.

There is a strong dance element in the sculptures. His mother Beryl Morina, with whom he lives, was a ballerina and examiner of classical ballet, but that Indonesian puppet theatre has been the more potent influence.

He first came across it while he was studying social anthropology at the University of Kent in Canterbury in the Seventies, when he also became intrigued by animistic and spirit cult religions. He says the palette of red, white and yellow in his works stems from animal-based symbolism.

"To my mind, all human beings have some animal or spirit-like quality that I try to depict," he says, sensing cat-like impulses in himself.

Michael's done a good deal of travelling and searching in his life, and a book of poetry he has written tells of dashed hopes, lost opportunities and broken relationships.

He's sunk a lot of money in producing this exhibition, in which his sculptures will be offered at £4,750 each and large-scale prints of both sides of the images have a price tag of £400 unframed, £475 framed.

"I hope the art world will take my work seriously," he says. "This exhibition has taken a long time coming, but I see it as launching my forthcoming struggle in life."

He was born in Israel in 1952, and first came to England when he was eight. His Oxford-educated father Hans taught anthropology and became a psychotherapist, and it was he who first lit the artistic spark in his son when he gave him a Japanese oil crayon set at the age of 12.

After school he enrolled at Ealing Art School, but left after three weeks, dismayed at "the unseriousness of it all". That suited his parents, who had never been keen on the idea in the first place, and this was when the University of Kent came into his life. Then there were the travels in Spain, and an aspiring artistic life in London in which high spots included exhibitions at the Ben Uri and Cork Street galleries and a commission to design 37 8ft-high dancing figures for the windows of Harvey Nichols in Knightsbridge.

Themes for the 16 other series of images yet to be completed include dance, optimism, civilisation, war, the female, the mask, the symbolist – and, inevitably, the dreamer.

His original plan was to exhibit all these series plus five more, making a total of 22, in "the corridor of life", a structure 172ft wide and the best part of a mile – yes, a mile – long.

It would have been adorned with 24 sculpted pergola towers 24ft high, plus a 20ft-diameter metallic globe representing the sun.

By 2007, he had realised that this grand plan "seemed a little over-ambitious", and after an exhibition that summer in the gardens of his former home in Winchester, he accepted that his work was well suited to a parkland setting.

Which brings us back to this month, and if not a parkland, at least the front garden of his house in Chippenham.

The fate of his further output hinges on the success of his "magic" sculptures, and it would be a snake-spirited kind of person who hoped it would not do the trick for him.

The Magic Series exhibition can be seen from Monday in the grounds of Highfields, 7a Greenway Park, Chippenham Wiltshire SN15 1QC until September 5. All works on show will be for sale. Exhibition hours are 10am to 6pm Monday to Saturday, closed Sunday. For further information, call 01249 653289 or visit www.thecorridoroflife.com