On sculpture:
Creating art in three dimensions is drawing from many angles at once. As you turn the form you see a shape that from a different angle asks to be solved, and as the form is turned again and again to be re-solved, until the image looks feels rightly from all angles. It is a challenge and a pleasure, and gives me understanding of the beauty, sharpnesses, subtleties and dynamics of form. – MA 2020
“To really understand life, the goal is to see things from all sides”- MA 2020
Candelabrum
Candelabrum, bronze with silver blackened Patina, 19″ height, 2017
I was inspired by thinking of how the light would change on a piece as the candles melted, catching sidelight to expose the features…I like the idea of a functional piece of art, something i would want on my own table, and I promised my mom before she passed away in 2016 that i would make something ‘NICE!’ 🙂
Fetish Fetish
What can i say except that I’m interested in contemporary discussions on sexuality, evolving gender theory and more to the point, I’m a guy. LOL. I am interested in removing shame around acknowledgement of our sensual and sexual human nature. So in honour of my ‘gurus’ including Dan Savage, Dr Ruth, Sue Johansen, Kinsey, Freud, Hugh Hefner, Donatello, … May this fetish fetish bring you heightened understanding and magical powers 🙂
I’ve always loved the dual definition of words:
Fetish
Definition:
- A form of sexual desire in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object, item of clothing, part of the body, etc.
- An excessive and irrational devotion or commitment to a particular thing.
- An inanimate object worshipped for its supposed magical powers or because it is considered to be inhabited by a spirit.
Fetish Fetish, bronze, 13″ in height, 2017, edition of 9.
Dog eat Dog
Always thinking… Business warrior, life as a competition, win-win, win-lose, if it is is win-lose, we all lose; ‘business is a game’…
My challenge was to make two dogs eating each other, and make sense in 3-d, and capture at every angle a nuanced expression from sly, demonic, playful and pleased joyous. and gentle. When i play with my dog he knows the limit, never really biting.
Dog Eat Dog 2017, Bronze (Available in Green Patina) Edition of 9, plus three artist proofs size approx. 9h x 10w x 10d.
Satyr and Sunshine
Satyr and Sunshine (Devil as Sunshine) 2016, Bronze.
Available in Green Patina) Edition of 9, 18.5h x 9w x 9d
Global Head Spin
Global Head Spin, 2015, Bronze (Available in Green Patina or Polished Bronze) Edition of 9, 24h x 14w x 12.5d
Pleasure Seekers
A multi-faced figure sharing limbs, facial features and pleasure. As a child i took pleasure at looking sideways into a mirror and making faces. As an adult i choose to make faces with clay.
‘Ice cream, birds, something hatching in my head.
Full belly, aroused, lip licking, accepted offerings, fulfilled.’
‘Pleasure Seekers’, Bronze (Available in Green Patina or Deep Silver Patina)
Edition of 12, 9h x 8w x 5d inches.
Cast at Burton Bronze Foundry, Salt Spring Island, BC.
The Lure
A woman on a dock, a muse, she is the lure, she is the hope. The fish with the salmon-like upstream impulses capture the nature of sexual impulse itself. The glass/ water acts as the division between earthliness and the unattainable. The fish below imagining what is above, a spiritual feeling of promise… This is not unlike a spiritual division of heaven and earth, of ideality and reality, the immaterial and the flesh.
Lure.
n.
1.
- Something that tempts or attracts with the promise of pleasure or reward.
- An attraction or appeal.
- A decoy used in catching animals, especially an artificial bait used in catching fish.
- A bunch of feathers attached to a long cord, used in falconry to recall the hawk.
T
r.v. lured, lur·ing:
- To attract by wiles or temptation; entice.
Thought: Call of the siren…
The lure. Woman as muse. Muse in a different realm, man fish, like salmon swimming upstream, the sexual,
/sensual impulse is innate. Nature of impulse, capturing a truth to attraction, of impulse for creativity, desire, wanting, it is the nature of the beast. The woman is the lure in this case. Split between two atmospheres, one of water one of air. The unattainable…
The Lure 2013, Bronze and Glass (Available in Green Patina or Matte Bronze) Edition of 9, 23.5h x 18h x 14d inches. Cast at Burton Bronze Foundry.
‘Classically Sacredly Romantically Profane’
‘Classically Sacredly Romantically Profane’ -Mixed media/found objects, 2014. Created for ‘Phantoms in the Front Yard’ Artists collective show called ‘Public Dreams, Private Myths’ – November 2014
Sleeping Dog
“Hoping to get by unscathed, potential, always the potential for things to unsettle, ergo the man’s tie dragging upon the sleeping dog. I liked the idea of the business man’s tie brushing, dragging across the dogs back. Is he sneaking, is he aware, ambiguous man child nature of the character, slinking posture… Open to interpretation, power structures, does the dog represent the sleeping masses, or the inevitable pitfalls of life, as in some ways no ones makes out out unscathed by some sort of trauma…. Or do they. The dual face is for motion, checking over right and left shoulder, nervous. one face looks somehow pleased like he is getting away with something, or possibly happy go lucky, the lower face a bit more worried… Two faces as piece is viewed in the round. Two faced? Sneaky? Checking over shoulders….
And so are we the sleeping dog unaware or are we the man getting but unscathed, but potentially going to get bitten. Or not… The nature of infallibility, or ignorance… Is the man the dog’s dream? Is the dog happily oblivious?… – MA 2014
Sleeping Dog 2013, Bronze (Available in Green Patina or Polished Bronze) Edition of 9, 11h x 18w x 9d inches. Cast at Burton Bronze Foundry.
Sleeping dog was originally done as a painted image, but with the potential for working the weight and subtleties of balance in 3 dimentions I had to do it! in 3-d.
The Big Fish
We all want to be the big fish. Somedays we are the little fish. Such is the nature of life.
I wanted to give my fish human attributes. The intention is to capture the nature of nature, the nature of business, of career, of societal structures, of strength and vulnerability, and of struggle and acceptance.
This idea has been brewing in my thoughts for a long time. I’ve always been a fan of Pieter Breugel’s artwork for it’s initially mysterious narrative and human scaled peasantry feel. He did a drawing in 1556 based on a Flemish proverb, ‘big fish eat little fish’, where small fish are spilling out of a cut bigger fish. The Metropolitan Museum says his image “relates to the theme of a senseless world in which the powerful instinctively and consistently prey on the weak. That the son understands the lesson is apparent from his gesture toward the other man in the boat, who has extracted a small fish from a larger one”
Sculpture detail: The Big Fish’ 2013, Bronze (Available in Green Patina or Polished Bronze) Edition of 9, 16h x 15w x14d inches
Started to sculpt…
While i exclusively painted and drew for many years, starting at the Onatrio College of Art in 1984, sculpting became a natural extension of my creative practice much later on. On a camping trip in the summer of 2008 I was hacking away with a dull knife, carving a fish out of firewood, splintery fingered pleasure. It was so mentally engaging, and it came to me quite readily! Upon returning from the summer trip I secured a few soapstones and carving tools, and I went about carving, not unlike Dick Van Dyck in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. After a few carvings in soapstone, with it being the dusty affair that it is, i turned to sculpting with wax based clay, where an additive and subtractive allowance gave me full freedom to play and evolve forms.
The Reef Project – 2004
