Speak to us of Freedom – enlargement for the bronze sculpture

by | J/12/20 | Uncategorised

The Gibran Sculpture Series

Here is the clay model of the intermediate enlargement of the sculpture.  Richard Clarke, the enlarger, is making the final touches.  This enlargement will be 2.2 metres high and will be cast in fine art bronze.
Abstract bronze sculpture of couple kissing.

The original bronze next to the new clay enlargement

It is a really lovely work of art for a private garden and for celebrating the endlessly read ‘The Prophet‘.
Click on the image to view a short video about the work.
The Prophet is an extremely well-known work all around the world.  It is one of the most translated books ever published and has been translated into over 100 languages (according to Wikipedia).
I hate synopses – they inevitably oversimplify – but if you haven’t read it, the book is a series of twenty-six short chapters of prose-poetry.  They are delivered by The Prophet, called Al Mustafa.  He is about to board a ship to go home.  He is stopped by a group of people, and the book records his philosophical musings on a wide variety of topics – one per chapter.
I have been creating bronze sculptures reflecting his brilliant views as expressed in the book for some years.
Unusually for such publications, The Prophet is secular.  Gibran was influenced by several religions, but is not considered to have been a member of any, despite having been brought up as a Maronite Christian. During his life he discussed the possibility of combining religions to form One True Religion.
See the finished Speak to us of Freedom sculpture here.
Visit to Petworth Art Gallery

Visit to Petworth Art Gallery

by | J/12/20 | Uncategorised

Today I visited the Moncrieff-Bray Art Gallery which is near Petworth in West Sussex, UK.
It carries some of my work.
Elspeth Moncrieff, the founder of the gallery, is long-established in the art world.  The gallery is beautiful and has a range of fine art paintings.
The gardens at Moncrieff-Bray, the Petworth Art Gallery in West Sussex, UK.
The lovely gardens at Moncrieff-Bray, the Petworth Art Gallery, show off the work of a number of sculptors to great effect.
Abstract bronze sculpture of couple kissing.

Speak to us of Love (The Kiss) – bronze fine art sculpture

She recently sold another cast of my work, ‘The Kiss’ and is also exhibiting ‘Contemplation’.
Abstract bronze sculpture of single armed figure holding the foot of a single leg.

Contemplation – bronze, fine art sculpture by Neil Lawson Baker

The gallery is well worth a visit, but during COVID, it is only by appointment (which can be short notice – circumstances permitting).
Speak to us of Freedom – a new armature!

Speak to us of Freedom – a new armature!

by | J/11/20 | Uncategorised

The Gibran Sculpture Series

Yesterday I went to the workshops where we have made a new steel armature.  It’s for a 2.2 metre fine art bronze sculpture of a work I have named:

“SPEAK to us of FREEDOM”.

A exaggeratedly tall standing female figure with long skirts. Her arms are held aloft and she is releasing a dove. The bronze statue is standing on a green grass lawn in front of an open barn-type building.

,An armature is the mechanism, the ‘internal scaffolding’, used to support the clay as we begin to build the sculpture.

This work echoes words from a poem of the same name by Kahlil Gibran from his famous book, The Prophet.  The book has sold millions of copies world-wide.  As a result, Gibran is the third most published poet of all time, with Shakespeare being the first.

Our next stage is to make the clay model.  We’ll do this by scaling up from my original smaller work using a pantograph tool.

Working by hand puts life and soul into a finished work, which a computerised 3D enlargement never does.

How enlargement works

I’ve put a larger version of the photo below and on the small bench you can see the original bronze from which we are scaling up.  The ordered jumble of vertical steel rods is the armature and that’s where the clay is going to go. That’s the next stage.  Richard Clarke, the enlarger, who is really talented at this stuff, is standing behind holding the pantograph tool.  It is a sort of mechanical magnifier, used to accurately replicate every tiny detail of the original onto the new enlarged clay.

Click on the photo for a video about the process.

See more about the finished Speak to us of Freedom sculpture here.

Progress check at the foundry

Progress check at the foundry

by | J/11/20 | Uncategorised

Greg Gilbert (the artist) with my sculpture of his 'Mother and Child' picture at the Morris Singer foundry

Recently, I went to the Morris Singer Foundry to see how the latest works in my Gibran Sculpture Series are coming along.

At the same time, I am making a sculpture of Greg Gilbert’s drawing ‘Mother and Child’.  Greg is a truly talented artist and friend.  I’m pleased to say that it is well-progressed and I met him there to decide on the size of the base and to choose the colour of the patination (which is the process of finishing the surface of a sculpture).

This work will be available in a limited edition to help swell the fundraising for Greg’s cancer treatment. www.gofundme/give4greg.

I took a short video showing the beginning of the patination process while we were there.

Here’s Greg holding the blowtorch used for patination next to the almost-finished work.

A visit to the enlargers

A visit to the enlargers

by | J/11/19 | Uncategorised

Sculpture 'Emily' at stage 1 of the enlargement process

I have just come back from Richard Clarke’s enlarging studios where we are making yet another of my works.  She’s called Emily.  We’re making her in resin as an experiment to see how she looks when she’s lifesize.

It is, of course, an enlargement and this is the first stage in that process.  The item is transformed from a small bronze casting, into a lifesize statue in polyurethane foam.  Once the polyurethane is finished and perfected, it will be layered with fibreglass resin and then be coloured to resemble bronze.

Of course this could be used as a finished work, but I always cast my works in bronze and have never let a resin go from my studios.  In my view, however they may look when they are first finished, resins are just not long lasting enough.  They will eventually deteriorate, although that might take many years.  And, although they look really pretty good, resin never has the finish or lustre/patination that a bronze acquires.  That finish grows and enhances, year-on-year, in a beautifully finished, cast work of art.

Here is ‘EMILY’ being enlarged.  She’s just work-in-progress at this stage.  Soon you will see the next step in the making of this sculpture…

To see the finished sculpture, click here.

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