Detail from "Meditation".
A life-size seated nude in my series "Daughters of the Caribbean Sun".
The sculptures in my series Daughters of the Caribbean Sun begin life in clay. I work from the live model and the process involves weeks of work. From the clay image a plaster cast is made as a preliminary to casting the figure in bronze. Until a bronze cast is commissioned, the plaster image is remains as the final form. Plaster casts are permanent for indoors but unsuited for outdoors.
On occasions I have experimented with a polymer additive to plaster as a means of enabling a sculpture to withstand the elements. My sculpture titled "Meditation" is a case in point. For over twelve years this life-size figure has survived all that the elements could throw at it - and not least, a major hurricane.
The surface of an unblemished plaster cast is deathly white. Sculptors in past times had a saying: clay is the life, plaster the death and bronze the resurrection. In this case mother nature gave life by applying her own masterful patina.
The picture below shows the sculpture in its original pristine state.
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