Bronze Figures - Drawing Into Sculpture

I find the most direct way to observe and catch the form and feeling evoked by a subject is through the simple and direct act of pen and ink drawing, which can be a quick study or a series of refinements. Working in clay from already distilled drawings allows me to focus on what is essential to a particular moment. What is revealed in the line of ink is what I look for in the clay. With this essential information in front of me I can at once work from observation and freely exercise my formal instincts as if I were working completely abstractly. This process is liberating. The results are freshly modeled sculptures that economically express the structure, movement, and weight of the figure while celebrating the material quality of the clay. It is here, in the tension between the reading of an image of the human form and the process to overcome the material’s resistance; the rigorous attention to contour, weight, and structure, executed in a quick gestural manner, that I find my place to communicate the ineffable, vital qualities of the human spirit.