Description
‘Know Not Your Own Secret’
after poem from ‘The Gardener’ by Rabindrinath Tagore
Dolomiti Limestone and Resin Sculpture
H 110 x W 30 x D 53 cm
Modelled in clay for stone-resin in edition of 15. This is the last cast in the edition.
Still available in bronze.
Collect from gallery £3,950
Bronze edition of 9: £10,500
Please ring to discuss delivery.
Helen Sinclair was born in South Wales in 1954. She studied sculpture at Wimbledon School of Art (1972- 1976). After teaching for twelve years, she has been a full-time sculptor since 1988. With her technician (traveller and writer Gary Ley) she does her own mould-making and resin casting. All her bronze sculpture is cast at the MB Fine Arts Foundry in Pembrokeshire.
The human figure is her primary subject : the actual figure (in movement and at rest, clothed and unclothed) and the figure as depicted by other artists in any medium and at any phase in history.
Her influences include the sculptural forms and mythology of ancient civilisations (Etruscan, Egyptian, South American), Italian Renaissance sculpture (especially Donatello) and twentieth century sculptors : Emilio Greco, Medardo Rosso, Giacometti and, most notably, Willhelm Lehmbruck. She also looks to painting for inspiration, especially Picasso, Matisse, Chagall and Modigliani.
“I have been making sculpture for over thirty years and the process is still a delight to me. With every piece I make, I find the working process both comfortingly familiar and refreshingly surprising.
Although not the only subject I work from, the human form is the one I keep coming back to: the actual figure (in movement and at rest, clothed and unclothed) and the figure as depicted by other artists in any medium and at any phase in history.
I make semi-figurative sculpture, cast into either resin or bronze from originals which I make in plaster, clay, wax, cardboard, wood.
The materials I work with are as stimulating to me as the subject matter.
I live by the sea and collect driftwood, broken furniture, discarded plastic debris and other beach-found ‘stuff’, all of which regularly introduce new and unexpected vocabulary to explore.
I have made small and large sculpture entirely of found material. These are all foundry-cast by the traditional lost wax method.”
From ‘The Gardener’ by Rabindrinath Tagore
I was one among many women busy with the obscure
daily tasks of the household.
Why did you single me out and bring me away from
the cool shelter of our common life?
Love unexpressed is sacred. It shines like gems in the
gloom of the hidden heart. In the light of the curious
day it looks pitifully dark.
Ah, you broke through the cover of my heart and dragged
my trembling love into the open place, destroying for ever
the shady corner where it hid its nest.
The other women are the same as ever.
No one has peeped into their inmost being, and they
themselves know not their own secret.
Lightly they smile, and weep, chatter and work.
Daily they go to the temple, light their lamps, and fetch
water from the river.
I hoped my love would be saved from the shivering
shame of the shelterless, but you turn your face away.
Yes, your path lies open before you, but you have cut off
my return, and left me stripped naked before the world with
its lidless eyes staring night and day.
