Artist Statement
I have been a sculptor for over forty years and have experimented with many different styles and materials. I began making welded sculpture at the age of fourteen, working with found objects obtained at the local junkyard. As a kid, I was always taking things apart to see how they worked; then later putting them back together again to see what I could come up with. My high school art teacher nurtured this growth. At that time, I also made portraits of friends and family. At Boston University, I received intensive training in the human figure. Every day consisted of three hours of studio instruction working from a model. It was a traditional school so we also did studio drawing, human anatomy and stone/woodcarving as part of the curriculum. My work is figurative in nature as I have always been interested in the human form and how it relates to the environment around it. I learned to make large scale sculpture by creating life-sized sculptures in clay.
The source of inspiration for my work comes from drawings done directly from a model. The sculpture itself is largely imaginative using the drawings as a guide so it may be abstract or representational. Traditionally art has been dominated by the image of mankind or animals. These images relate directly to the emotional experiences of our lives. This emotional aspect and the element of sub-conscience accident takes the sculpture out of the realm of realism. I like to have an interaction with material I am working; quite often the material will suggest a certain direction for me to take so that I may not end up with the same idea that I had in the beginning. For me the creation of art is not so much about reproducing the world around me as it is about interpreting that world. The outside forces acting upon an artist, “life’s daily struggles” I think have a great deal to do with how a work finally evolves.
One of my main sources of inspiration has been prehistoric art, in particular the sculpture dated Prior to 10,000 years BC. These works have an elegant simplicity that makes them appear “modern”. Many are “bird goddesses” and “fertility figures” which has inspired me to do some of my sculptures.
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