Artist Statement
My approach to sculpture originates from my interest in human beings, set within our modern condition. This interest is essentially anthropocentric and draws upon the vast corpus of figurative styles from different civilizations. This allows me freedom of interpretation. I test these archaic sources and not so archaic sources against nature, my own identity and prevailing contemporary sculptural practice. I’m interested in the way light and space aid structural elements in my work, how they reveal form across and between surfaces. These two elements, light and space are inseparable, and according to their transmutable qualities acting on the surfaces of my forms at any given moment, shift the psychological impact of my forms. Graduation of tonalities enhance the contoured surfaces of my forms and at their brightest transform edges into lines, thus illuminating the near space surrounding my sculpture, exposing the formal rationale and the spherical structural clarity of my sculptures. I work towards a perfect interpenetration of substance and form to create style, although style is not my conscious aim. I model in clay using varying viscosities and textures, from rough to smooth, to enhance the sensuality of my work and the subjects I work from. Once my initial image takes shape through a process of congealable impulses, I then step back and allow my work to become self-regulating. Following the sculpture lightly without willful intent, without heaviness or affectation of profundity, to where it takes me. I allow the image to reveal and resolve itself into a total form.
For me, drawing is relaxed spontaneous play. I draw from life be it human figures, portraits, plants, trees or landscapes, because imagination alone is often inadequate to the task of understanding form, without repetition and often trifling in the face of nature. I use drawing to hone the improvisations of my intuitions; this helps sharpen my responses in my sculpture making.
Drawing also helps facilitate points of internalized concentration and helps release the slower latent rhythmic energies of sculpture making. Drawing expands my compositional repertoire. Lessons I then use as aides in my understanding of other artist’s formal intentions, which for the most part is linear. This includes art forms other than the visual arts such as music.