Large Seated Armed Figure is a classic example of Bernard Meadows's work, in subject matter, in the tensions exhibited within the forms and the contrasts between them. It is a confrontational piece, at once aggressive and vulnerable. The blades of knives and spears jut from the sides of the figure which appears to be clothed in a flack jacket. How-ever, the figure is naked but for this slight cover, and his unprotected human attributes leave him as vulnerable as the rest of us. Meadows made other sculptures close in form to this, standing, sitting and armed, first in plaster then cast in bronze.

Another cast of this sculpture belongs to the Keatley Trust and is on loan to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

Other preoccupations throughout Meadows's career have been crab and bird forms, and he has kept largely to these references, and to the human figure, in his sculpture, drawing and collage, however abstract the work might be. These armed figures came a few years before Meadows began working with softer rounded forms, erotic imagery in highly polished bronze, which contrast greatly with the awkwardly composed crabs and cockerels, jabbing and squawking.