Sunday, June 30, 2013

In the beginning…




As God didn’t have a please a patron or satisfy a board of trustees, I doubt if he made a preliminary sketch or marquette before he created the world.  Sculptors seldom have the same creative freedom. 

Usually commissioners need visible evidence of what’s in the sculptor’s mind’s eye.  When the evidence is to their liking, they want the work to follow suit and the creative process stops there and then.  For this reason, I have grown wary of presenting preliminary sketches and maquettes.  I have learnt that the creative spark ignites all the better when the work is in progress.  Sometimes the model relaxes into a more convincing pose or a group of figures fall into a better arrangement. 

On the other hand, a small maquette occasionally has more life than the finished figure.  I believe this to be the case with my maquette of a Frenchman playing boules - one of a group of figures that I made for the city of Leeds.

Today’s pictures show the 7-inch high plaster maquette and the clay life-size figure. And that’s me in the process of making the waste moulds. 

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