Portrait Challenge

" This aspect of sculpture has always interested and challenged me and I have been fortunate enough to have received commissions to produce portrait bronzes of such men as physicist Sir Lawrence Bragg, the Prime Warden Sir Adam Butler, actresses Elizabeth Seal, Leslie Caron and Sally George, actors Clive Revill, Keith Mitchell. The challenge is not the making of a likeness of the sitter but catching their attitude and stance albeit in just the head and making sure that image works as a piece of sculpture. This means making it work as an interesting three dimensional object, exploiting eccentric and idiosyncratic form and surface. These factors derive from close observation of the subject, memory recall plus technical features of the chosen material. For instance a cast bronze head should be uniquely different to that carved in stone or wood. The modeling media have certain similarities but terra cotta permits a quite different range of surface texture and detail than a cast bronze and should be exploited. Resins are somewhat anonymous but never the less can be exploited for qualities that do not exists in other materials and therefore offer a range of effects that can be useful. Some heads are immediately and intrinsically interesting, showing good bone structure an interesting nose good or eccentrically shaped ears, a long neck and so on. These features are attractive to play with when conjuring up the three dimensional equivalent and often seduce the young sculptor into only working from such stimulating creatures. My view, after a long experience, is that if you are any good at making sculpture there is potential in all characters. The sculptors task is to marry his skills to acute observation keeping in mind the fact that all people have memorable characteristics that enables others to recognize them, not only close to but often from a far away as it possible to see them. Those are the features you search for and utilize. That is the challenge."


QUENTIN CRISP Click here for more info Quentin Crisp
"I first worked from the model, Quentin Crisp, in 1947 at Hammersmith School of Art and. I continued to work with him through successive years, both as a student and tutor, until the summer of 1977, when he was about to leave the art school life that had made him The Naked Civil Servant, to live in the USA, and I was about to give up teaching and live by my sculpture. For some reason I had become one of the few people Quentin still posed for during those last months of his modelling career. The final session arrived with Quentin coming into the studio wearing a smart new black fedora hat. Apparently someone had come up to him in the street and said 'You can wear this better than me,' and gave him the hat — this was the story he told me. I had never made a serious portrait sculpture of Quentin and suggested that at this late period I should. He agreed and so I modelled a portrait of him wearing that hat, subsequently cast in bronze and sold at Sotheby's, giving me life membership of the Chelsea Arts Club, where I last saw Quentin. When I was approached by BAMS (British Art Medal Society) to make a medal, Quentin had recently died in Manchester (which he would have hated) so I thought I would commemorate a special moment in both our lives by making the medal "Quentin Crisp's Fedora."
John W. Mills

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" LESLIE CARON "
Pure bronze collection with patina light & dark pattern bronze
size: 45cm x 17.5 x 19cm.
Product code: JMLC090002
Price:£5532 + Vat
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for more info
Leslie Caron

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