As I looked more closely at the dates and the subjects they seemed to tell a story…… a man and then a woman emerging from a dark place… gradually the figures shed the darkness they are wrapped in…. Gradually they emerge and become more whole.  The man comes out both fighting and defensive, looking round, on guard. 
The woman never quite makes it to three dimensions, she begins to emerge and when she finally does it is as a sliver of gold, a fantasy woman without substance, as if the man can never really see her clearly for what she is. 
Along the way there are moments when man and woman meet, there is knee trembling passion on his part but she remains aloof and distant.  And between these events the darkness overtakes again, sinking back into that terrible cavernous blackness.

I could see that the sculpture was the means for Maurice to awaken and to move on, sculpting his way out of his past.  He says he never thought of it like this and only realised it when I pointed out what I saw.