BLACK RHINO Sculpture

ARTIST STATEMENT: SCULPTURE My sculptures focus on two seemingly disparate subjects, although they are certainly interconnected: the nude female form and large animals. The images may seem antithetical, as nude women are typically presented as icons of gentility or sexuality, and big animals as menacing beasts, but I tend to ignore these entrenched perceptions. Both subjects offer commanding anatomical forms that demonstrate my passion for the natural world and all that inhabit it. My interest in the sculptural female form was a natural progression from my painted images of women within nature; however, the three-dimensionality of sculpture offered me a new and different set of artistic possibilities: unlike the two-dimensionality of the painted nude form, the sculptural image must be presented in multiple views, all of which are exposed to the viewer. This approach is exhilarating, as it enables me to present women as, literally, multi-faceted. The majority of my female forms do not face or acknowledge the viewer, as I intentionally want to defy art historical conventions of posed women intrinsically searching for approval from an audience. I tend to depict women, many of whom are inspired by stories from ancient mythology, folk tales, legends, and religion, as pre-occupied in their own physical, emotional, and intellectual space, dismissive of objectifying glances; viewers are encouraged to contemplate the women’s power, facilitated by the natural strength of materials and content with which I ascribe them. The animals that I depict tend to be large and wild, and detached from domestication. And while small, domesticated animals may garner attention for their “cute factor,” I am drawn to animals, such as the leopard and rhinoceros, which typically occupy their natural habitat in Africa, and whose behavior is therefore unregulated and instinctual. I want to capture their authenticity in my sculptures by depicting these animals as both powerful and vulnerable in a world in which they are both predators and prey. The mid nineteenth-century French animal-painter Rosa Bonheur was the first woman artist to focus on large animals as subject-matter (a pursuit deemed exclusively male); continuing this legacy enables me to connect with her desire to visually capture, but not actually capture, these imposing creatures of the natural world. Although I have sculpted using a variety of media, my usual sculptural approach is casting by implementing the lost-wax method. After conceiving and developing my ideas, I start by making an armature on a wooden base, using metal bars, wire, and wet newspaper. Onto this structure, I build up the form with clay, utilizing both an additive and reductive process to create a tangible form of my envisioned final piece. Once the modeling work is finished, I send it to a foundry to make a mold, as I prefer to focus on the creative aspect of sculpting rather than its technical procedures. Wax is then poured into the mold, and the wax replica is removed, so a ceramic shell can be built around that wax. Tubes are also built into this structure to provide for the next step in the process: pouring molten metal into the wax to replace it with metal --- hence the term “lost-wax.” The casting is not always done in one piece, so some welding is also included in the process. The piece is now a very shiny object of pure bronze, on which my selected colour or patina is applied. I view this entire sculptural process as appropriate for my work: the weight of the bronze aptly alludes to the physical strength of the human and animal figures which I depict; and, incredibly, with only some variations, the lost-wax method has existed since pre-historic times, allowing me the opportunity to celebrate this rich sculptural history. ********