Happy New Year to you all!  I so hope that it will be better for us all than 2021!

We have been busy in the workshops, and the Gibran Crime and Punishment mould has just been finished off, ready to go to the foundry.  Here’s the photographic evidence!

Using the clay enlargement, we have made this resin.  From that we have made a mould which can also be used ultimately to send to the foundry to cast it as a work of art  – a bronze sculpture.  2023 is the centenary of the publication of Kahlil Gibran’s stupendous work ‘The Prophet‘.  Perhaps it will be the year in which this heroic work is made truly public too.

The man is knocking at the gates of Heaven asking for forgiveness.

Happy New Year !

The latest photo of the finished resin for Speak to us of Crime and Punishment

A front view of the full-sized mould for the Gibran Series sculpture, Speak to us of Crime and Punishment

Gibran Sculpture Series – Speak to us of Crime & Punishment.
Full sized back view of mould.

Gibran Sculpture Series – Speak to us of Crime & Punishment.
Full sized back view of mould. – in the sun!

A Very Happy New Year !

Another funny old Christmas time and the start of yet another very difficult year, as this country and the rest of the world struggle to recover.  Some countries are also stricken with weather disasters and the whole world population is still at risk from the pandemic.

So here in our studios we count our blessings, work hard, isolate, get jabbed and strictly follow the guidelines.

And we thank God that we are not the ones having to make all those almost impossible decisions about lockdowns which fall to governments.

How they ever sleep soundly goodness only knows.

We are just busy patinating the latest work in the Gibran Prophet series and from the sculpture workshops wish you as Happy a Christmas as you can possibly have, wherever you are.

2022 will soon be here and we must all try to think positive.

Happy Christmas !

The latest photo of the wax for Speak to us of Crime and Punishment

The Gibran Sculptures

The Prophet Series

The new miniatures at an early stage.

Here we are in mid-November.  Some of the works in The Gibran Sculpture Series – ‘The Prophet’ are being made as miniatures.

It will be a set of five works, comprising: ‘Speak to us of Children’, ‘Speak to us of Freedom’, ‘Speak to us of Giving’, ‘Speak to us of Prayer’ and ‘Speak to us of Crime and Punishment’.

The works will be about 160mm (just over 6″) high.  They are under construction in the studio at the moment and will be available as a set or individually.  They will be available either in resin or in patinated bronze.

Speak to us of Children – work-in-progress

Speak to us of Prayer – work-in-progress

Speak to us of Crime & Punishment – work-in-progress

More coming soon…!

Just a short Blog to say that it’s been another busy week!

Apart from pressing on with trying to organise sculpture exhibitions for the Gibran Prophet centenary in 2023, I have launched my Bowdleflode children’s book project with the availability of some of the first books on Amazon, as well as at Waterstones and many other platforms.

www.bowdleflodes.com

Here I am at the Talos Foundry, near Andover in Hampshire, signing some new waxes for some exciting new castings.

In the picture below, I’m standing by my sculpture ‘Speak to us of Children’ which is one of my Gibran Sculptures, part of The Prophet Series.  I’m standing with Andrew Cocks who is a well-known sculptor in his own right. Most of the large dinosaur sculptures made in the last few years for museums are from his studio in the Isle of Wight.

Andrew Cocks and Neil standing next to Speak to us of Children

What an incredibly sad day it is today. The first day of October 2021 and yesterday we had to say goodbye to Greg who, at the age of 44, passed peacefully after a very tough, long, hard fight against bowel cancer.

Mother and Child – Greg Gilbert

A talented musician with his band, The Delays, an amazingly creative artist (I called him the 21st century Hieronymus Bosch).  He was a lovely warm hearted man, a wonderful husband and devoted father; the world and his family and friends have been so unfairly deprived.

My heart goes out to Stacey and the children.

I was privileged to know him through the art world and when he was unwell in 2017, I asked him if I could make a sculpture for him by creating a three dimensional representation of one of his beautiful drawings.

Appropriately it was a Mother and Child and here are some photographs showing the work being taken from a drawing into a clay model and eventually into a fine art bronze.

Greg signing the original finished wax model.

Greg , with me, Neil, in the workshop studio with the finished clay sculpture.

Greg, at the foundry, holding the heat gun used to create the final patina on the newly-finished sculpture.

Greg, at the foundry, holding the heat gun used to create the final patina on the newly-finished sculpture.

Subsequently he sent me a photograph of his daughter Bay admiring the sculpture. A stunning photograph and one which will always bring back my memories of a special friendship during which he also made me a treasured drawing of my late father.

Greg’s daughter Bay, looking hard at his Mother & Child sculpture.

God bless him!