Artist Statement - Carol Lehrer Crawford

A quotation from Carol Crawford:

“It is the sensory nature of sculpture that I find most appealing – for me sculpture is not only tactile in the creative stages, but it is also tactile and palpable to the person viewing the finished form. The observer often wants to reach out and touch the pieces. I draw on this sensory attraction to create the organic forms, be they abstract or representational, that emerge from the medium I am working with, whether that is clay, plaster, alabaster or soapstone.

Carol has had a traditional sculpture education working in the Tom Bass Sculpture Studio, and for many years worked under the close guidance of the late Tom Bass. His teaching method was in the master/ apprentice model, which has left an indelible impact on Carol’s practice. Tom taught her to ‘see’ and conveyed to her the importance of finding the essence or soul in whatever she was creating – be it figurative or abstract.

For some years Carol discovered sculpture through the building up process of modelling in clay, and working in direct plaster. In more recent years she has been engaged with carving alabaster, limestone and soapstone. This hand worked process allows her to realise the character of the form within the stone.

Carol draws inspiration from artists such as Jacob Epstein, who sees the process of carving stone as one in which the sculptor and the material form a union of sorts – “strange copulation of spirit and matter...the conception that at last becomes a piece of sculpture”.

Carol enjoys the figurative and abstract form equally. As Henry Moore said in 1934, “all art is abstraction to some degree, in sculpture the material forces one away from pure representation and towards abstraction...but to me of equal importance is the psychological human element”.

Carol lives and sculpts in Sydney, Australia.