With over four decades of devotion to the medium of clay, my practice is a lifelong dialogue with form. My journey has been a non-linear evolution, encompassing years as an educator in the art department of Cambrian College and a significant chapter within the technology sector. I have come to see my time in the computer industry not as a hiatus from my craft, but as a parallel creative pursuit; I found that the architecture of technology and the logic of systems require a creative spark equal to that of the studio, though expressed through a different language.
Ultimately, however, the tactile pull of the earth remained my constant. My work is a search for the “essence” of things—a pursuit heavily influenced by the anthropomorphic abstractions of Henry Moore and the essentialist forms of Constantin Brancusi. I am equally drawn to the emotive, flowing beauty of Auguste Rodin’s La Danaïde and the visceral weight of his Burghers of Calais.
On the spectrum between the Classical and the Romantic, my work lives firmly in the latter. I am captivated by spontaneity and the profound emotive responses it can evoke in the viewer. While I plan my compositions to provide a structural foundation, I find no joy in the process unless there is room for the unexpected. As Brancusi once observed:
“There are idiots who define my work as abstract; yet what they call abstract is what is most realistic. What is real is not the appearance, but the idea, the essence of things.”
Through my sculpture, I strive to peel back the appearance of the world to reveal that underlying essence, allowing the clay to speak with its own spontaneous, romantic voice.
Contact information: 705-691-0201