Blog
Back to Sculpture after a long gap
29/02/2020
It's been a long age since I made a proper big fat gorgeous sculpture - since wandering of into painting a few years ago I had allowed myself to forget its joys. After my initial meeting with my mentor Manick Govinda at Tate Modern last year I sloped off to look at the current exhibition, which happened to be Franz West. His boisterous forms, irridescent rocks, wearable sculptures and general exuberance (and Sarah Lucas's delicious plinths) made me itch to get back to making a dirty great colourful non-sensical object, incorporating my new painting practise.
The wonderful thing about sculpture is that there is a lot of time when you can mindlessly pat, sand, wind, rinse, and stretch it without being constantly on red alert like with painting. Drop your guard with a painting and it collapses. You need constant vigilance to make sure you are being both spontaneous and wild, controlled and thoughtful. Many happy hours can be spent making sculpture with your mind rolling along nowhere in particular.
My studio neighbour Dominique Rey has been using Modrock and I got my son to give me a few rolls for Christmas. Finishing some paintings I've been working on since July 2019, I thought I'd have a bash at making a 3D version of a pony-like cutout I'd been delighted to make last year. I'm now addicted to Modrock, getting to the studio at 7.30 yesterday to try a solution to its non-drying that I'd been figuring out in bed - most of the night, it felt like. I'm now halfway through a large thing that looks a bit like a cactus, a bit like a galleon. It's taking form on its wooden armature made from bits of salvaged timber ( parts of some signage and old cot) , and it still needs sort of dewlap or bingo-wing under its neck, but I'm on the home run and looking forward to giving it a luscious satiny coat of pearly plaster then painting it up with rich colours.
The wonderful thing about sculpture is that there is a lot of time when you can mindlessly pat, sand, wind, rinse, and stretch it without being constantly on red alert like with painting. Drop your guard with a painting and it collapses. You need constant vigilance to make sure you are being both spontaneous and wild, controlled and thoughtful. Many happy hours can be spent making sculpture with your mind rolling along nowhere in particular.
My studio neighbour Dominique Rey has been using Modrock and I got my son to give me a few rolls for Christmas. Finishing some paintings I've been working on since July 2019, I thought I'd have a bash at making a 3D version of a pony-like cutout I'd been delighted to make last year. I'm now addicted to Modrock, getting to the studio at 7.30 yesterday to try a solution to its non-drying that I'd been figuring out in bed - most of the night, it felt like. I'm now halfway through a large thing that looks a bit like a cactus, a bit like a galleon. It's taking form on its wooden armature made from bits of salvaged timber ( parts of some signage and old cot) , and it still needs sort of dewlap or bingo-wing under its neck, but I'm on the home run and looking forward to giving it a luscious satiny coat of pearly plaster then painting it up with rich colours.
