The Path to Gondwana Sculpture

Internationally acclaimed Paper Sculpture Artist from Melbourne, Australia. Ray Besserdin, has established a 35-year career that is recognised internationally with extensive awards to date, including two gold from New York, and a “Gold Medal for Creativity” from Mondial Art Academia, France. Born to artist parents, Ray’s techniques are entirely self-taught. He sculptures artworks dimensionally much like bas-reliefs working with “a palette of sheet-formed papers” that offer a wide spectrum of colours, textures, solidity, and delicate translucency. The stocks are mostly mould-made or handmade cotton, mulberry (Kozo), hemp and flax stocks from Europe and Asia. Works range from miniature to over 6 by 3.8 metres and vary from abstract to ultra-realistic. Inspired by painters of the French Impressionist Period, Ray pioneered and developed a technique to achieve their kind of aesthetic expression using sculptured torn papers three-dimensionally, where they used paint two- dimensionally. This “Impressionist Sculptured Paper” is what he considers his signature style. Its focus is to capture emotion, life, and expression over realism using torn, raw pieces arranged into the likeness of the subject yet always revealing the character and nature of the papers from which the subjects are created. Nature is his favourite subject matter. Works hang in private and corporate collections in London, Monaco, Munich, Manhattan, Tokyo, New Zealand and throughout Australia. Ray is Australian Ambassador for Mondial Art Academia, France.