Head Studies

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Surveying the proliferation of marble and bronze busts of antiquity, I've come to see this form of portraiture as a kind of benevolent decapitation. It is an artistic execution undertaken with the good intentions of re-casting the head into a new, ageless form, magically preserving the sitter's essence for posterity. Gazing into their hollow eyes, however, it seems that very few actually survive the procedure; human content cannot be so contained.

So portraiture, as such, falls short of accomplishing what it intends. My own sculptural studies of the head proceed from the site of this failure. Created with out singular points of reference, they have no external model besides that of simply the process of their own making. This process values recognition over observation, response over intent, the quality of immanence over that of permanence.