Anna - The Models Maillot Sculpture

The bronze ‘Anna' was selected to feature for International Women’s Day at the Vane Gallery, UK during ‘WO/‘ 2018. About the work - This piece was modelled from life in clay and cast in bronze at Powderhall Edinburgh. The female sitting figure is an homage to the Italian sculptor, Maillot who typically presented the female form in this way. My interpretation of his work has missing toes and an extended index finger in a defiant gesture despite her bowed and submissive head. One digit is absent from each foot. 
With this work I was interested in the representations of artists' models; in this case, the model was herself a talented artist who sought an extra income to sustain her own creative practice. Her pose conjured memories of the hundreds of sculptured nude women in galleries worldwide, whose reasons for sitting are not documented.
 A common theme in my work is dismembered digits. Here, it is notions of beauty in its most cruel form, self abuse and a sense of entrapment which led to the absence of those particular toes; their loss does not lend itself to any disability, rather a purely aesthetic issue.