9 Comments

sensational. your posts activate the mind and heart.

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I wonder how many tools you used and how long the project took to complete. The piece is beautiful and must have taken a lot of time, patience, inspiration and great talent!

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This is stunning! And I truly appreciate the history lesson - very insightful.

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Thank you once again for the art and spiritual history lesson. I appreciate how you connect what you do to what has gone before. Even though I have been to the Rodin museum in Paris, a profoundly impactful experience, I didn’t know the history of the Gates of Hell.

I would have to agree with you regarding man’s worldview shifting from the contemplation of the meaning of suffering which can lead one outward towards God and the current zeitgeist that turns man in on himself to seek a utopia of his own making.

Is it not ironic that “The image we have come to call “The Thinker” sits before the gates of hell? Where does all our thinking lead to? I will have to consider “The Poet”. I wonder what Rodin’s Gates of Paradise would have looked like had he lived to create such a gate? From his sculptures I gained the sense that he was far more familiar with hell than heaven. He brilliantly depicted human anguish. I remember encountering his sculpture of a woman carrying a stone on her shoulder. When I saw it I was struck viscerally with the knowledge of what is meant by carrying a chip on one’s shoulder.

I appreciate how your work brings us full circle back to The Man of Sorrows. What the ancients expressed was brought to fulfillment in Christ who shared all our sufferings yet rather than remaining in that state endured the cross for the joy that was set before him, our redemption, resurrection, and entrance into beatitude.

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Just sublime

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I’ve never thought of it until your relief carving was shared here…. Do you do value checks with light from different angles? And then study and adapt/correct depending on how lines of composition are shifted by shifting angles?

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Yes! I usually work with a fairly strong light from the side. Sometimes you can get caught out by working in one position, so the odd angle changed is important

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Then is there a preference for working on pieces where you know how and where they will be placed? And your light can be placed as it would be experienced? As someone who primarily paints and does textile objects, this is new and intriguing to think about.

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Most definitely! If the source of light is face on, it drowns the piece, casting no shadows and the detail is lost

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