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-->Art & Craft Gallery --> Drawing --> Sculpture --> Artist's Work --> Commissions --> Charles Poulsen | | Search |
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I am a sculptor living and working in the Scottish Borders with my wife Pauline Burbidge (textile artist). Lead is my primary material though concrete is sometimes used alongside the lead.
Castings I have been experimenting for the last couple of years with casting in lead by pressing objects into a bed of sand. Usually the same object is used over and over again to create flow and movement within a frame; the frame helps to order this movement. These reliefs are like drawings and this idea is helped by the use of negative space within casts forming a layered lattice of flowing lines (see images Twig & Branch and Silent Flow) Wrapping Wrapping objects in lead has been an ongoing interest of mine over many years. I am very interested in how wrapping objects in lead alters their whole sense. In the case of Resurgam a large stone off the beach is wrapped in lead. The object rather than being weighed down by the lead looses its feeling of weight. I have used tools, the shovel being a favourite (used in several pieces such as Crossed Shovels and Five Shovels) which I like because of its relationship to the body. I wrap the shovel and then I remove it and I can then repeat the wrapping creating a series of 'ghosts' of the shovel. These ghosts I then further manipulate by folding and flattening. Welding Since 2004, I have started to weld the lead together. Before this, I only used lead as single sheets. The use of welding has given me a new direction with my use of lead as it enables me to wrap objects that are truly three-dimensional. I have begun a series of works using sections of tree as a starting pont. My aim with these sculptures is to bring the natural and the man made closer together to a point where it is not clear whether what you are looking at is a man made object or a natural one. The section of tree is carefully selected and where the cuts are made is an essential part of the work. Concrete I use concrete alongside the lead. I use concrete in a very fluid way. Again I wrap, but this time the wrapping (plastic sheet) is a means to an end. The concrete is put in the plastic wet and then sealed and rolled or folded. When the concrete is set the plastic is stripped away. (See Resurgam and Straddle.) Hush 'Hush' as a word has appeared in my drawings and sculpture for some time (see Hush House and Hush). My interest arose from the fact of it being almost a non-word as it is trying to suggest as well as command silence. It is intimately associated with lead, which is known as the 'silent material' (making hardly any sound when hit and being in fact used as an insulator against sound). Also in old lead mining a hush was a valley where hushing (a process to expose the lead ore) went on. Rubbings The idea for these came from my interest as a sculptor in feeling with my hands as much as using my eye. The idea was to rub round three-dimensional objects and to then flatten them out so everything could be seen at once. Drawings The drawings are large (sixty inches by forty inches) made by soaking the paper in linseed oil, then rubbing in charcoal until there is a dense black all over. The drawing is achieved by scraping the surface of the paper and exposing the white underneath. These drawings are not drawings for sculpture but a separate part of my practice. The drawings feed the sculpture and vice versa. Charles Poulsen 2006 |