My love affair with the nude dates back to 1971. In that year I was seduced by Enzo Plazzotta’s sculpture, Jamaican Girl. The infatuation was such that I followed my temptress to the land of her birth, and thereafter, the Caribbean became my adopted home. Little did I realise that, in my search for my seductress, she had sought me in my native land.
But alas, my seductress, like her African forefathers, has yet again suffered the indignity of being sold. This time around, it's the Yorkshire Sculpture Park that has put her on the market for thirty-six thousand pounds inc. vat. They in turn acquired her at action in 2019.
One a brighter note, the sculpture was originally cast as an edition of nine and I understand, from one of my models, that the University of the West Indies has one of the casts. I hope they ensure that she remains in the region of her birth.
Regrettably, I never met Enzo Plazzotta's model for the Jamaican Girl, but over the last fifty years I have had the good fortune of working with equally inspirational models from most of the Caribbean Islands. They are depicted in hundreds of paintings and scores of sculptures in my series Daughters of the Caribbean Sun. The image below shows my clay sketch for a life-size sculpture of my Dominican model Annabelle.
No comments:
Post a Comment