Another day’s work

didn’t have my camera after yesterday’s session so started the day with a photo op.

five hours and two bags of stone rubble later…

Getting Started

I have chosen the stone and decided the subject and spent the afternoon getting the feel for the shapes by carving a pair of hands from a foam block.

The stone is chlorite, which i have not used before but is reckoned to be nicely behaved and polishes to a deep black.

A day later the rubble sacks are filling up.

A different form of carving

Been away from my workbench for a bit too long.
Hope that when I get back to London next week that a new shipment of blue alabaster will be about to arrive.

My first post

This all feels a bit like the first time I held a chisel and a mallet in my hands and took a few tentative whacks at a new piece of stone!

Until a couple of weeks ago I viewed “blogging” with deep suspicion, and how interesting that typing the word now, I find that it is not recognised by Word! I was of the belief that blogging was the preserve of the web generations especially those who spent altogether too much time in front of their screens.

In the conversations with Al and then Chris who are the architects of my new website, I found my preconceptions challenged and exciting new possibilities opening up on how to communicate with anyone who was interested in my sculpture.

All the same, it is a bit like standing at the top of a ski run that is so steep you can’t actually see where your first few turns are going to be but here goes.

One of the things I hope to be able to do on this page is to post a largely pictorial commentary on the creation of new pieces from the raw block to the polished end. Another might be show some of the things that inspire ideas for new pieces like in the practice blogs that Al and Chris put together for me after one of our preliminary planning sessions.

Anyway, I hope that posting blogs will become as routine a task as tidying up my studio at the end of each work session and will be of interest to some of you out there and that I will eventually lose this terribly self conscious feeling I have now.

Before and after polishing

It always amazes me just how much the final polish can bring a work to life. It’s hard work, but it’s always worth it. There’s a wonderful sense of discovery to it. So, I thought I’d post a before and after example.

So, here’s me at marble/Marble, with a work in progress –

And here it is once it’s finished and polished. It’s quite the transformation!

From figurative to abstract

When I began my training, I thought I would be a painter, I loved colour so much aa well as the smell and texture of oil paints. In fact, before I did my Diploma in Figurative Sculpture at Heatherley, I completed a Diploma in Portraiture. The first project we undertook on the course was a portrait head, sculpted in clay. I realised straight away that I wanted to work in three dimensions.

As I made more and more sculptures, I realised that I wasn’t interested in directly reproducing reality. After working in almost infinitely malleable clay, carving stone was a liberation from the dominance of reality. It was easier to stay focused on the essential elements of structure and design.

Now, I’m a purely abstract sculptor. My work is all about the twist, the wave and the loop. It doesn’t reproduce reality, but it does – for me, at least – represent it.

That’s quite a journey for someone who started by wanting to be a figurative portrait painter! But, you never know where the road’s going to take you until you start walking it…

Inspiration at the Theatre

I was at the Theatre in Vienna last week; a lovely performance, but what struck me was a moment when a member of the audience sitting in a box at the side of the theatre, face and arms illuminated front the front against a dark background,with her hands – a bit like this:

It struck me as such a simple, elegant, universal position. When I got home, I sketched it, and found that I was really drawing the basic structures of the body; the weight and hang of the head, the cone shape of the arm:

The two shapes – the head and the arm – taken together fascinated me, so I used my sketch as inspiration for a small model in clay –

There’s something very elegant about those two shapes together. I think this might lead to some interesting work! I’ll keep you posted of any developments.

Falling for alabaster

Alabaster is such a lovely, sweet- natured stone. It doesn’t have a strong grain, so it’s easy to work with. Although it’s a soft stone, it holds an edge beautifully.

It has such a colour -

And such texture -

More alabaster works in my gallery, here.