Helen Sinclair
~~I have been making sculpture for over thirty years and the process is still a delight to me. With every piece I make, I find the working process both comfortingly familiar and refreshingly surprising.
Although not the only subject I work from, the human form is the one I keep coming back to: the actual figure (in movement and at rest, clothed and unclothed) and the figure as depicted by other artists in any medium and at any phase in history.
I cast my sculpture into limited editions in either stone-resin or foundry-cast bronze from originals which I make in plaster, clay, wax, cardboard, wood and other mixed media
The materials I work with are as stimulating to me as the subject matter.
I live by the sea and collect driftwood, broken furniture, discarded plastic debris and other beach-found ‘stuff’, all of which regularly introduce new and unexpected vocabulary to explore.
I enjoy all the materials that I work with but, for me, there is something especially appealing about using beach-found wood. Every piece has a mystique about it because it has its own personality and a history that I know nothing about. This imparts a poetry and a drama which demands respect. I cannot dominate the pieces; I have to work with them. I assemble the bits as I find them. I have a ‘rule’ that the individual pieces should be manipulated as little as possible. I sometimes have to cut something down to make it ‘fit’ but any disturbance of the surface depletes the wood of its integrity and charm and weakens it aesthetically.
All my pieces (bronze and resin) are hand-finished and the bronzes hand-patinated. No two pieces will be the same - even within an edition, each cast is ‘unique’.
