Midas
I am a figurative sculptural artist working mainly in ceramics. My work is heavily influenced by classical works of sculpture but the Midas project’s focus is more on how people automatically project onto realistic pieces of sculpture. I am interested in how this empathetic projection can cause feelings of unease and discomfort in people from certain pieces on a very visceral level. Using this phenomenon as the area to explore for my work I have created a collection of hand sculpts loosely based on the King Midas myth that, because of the empathetic link, are trying to evoke certain emotions and feelings in the observer. I chose to sculpt hands because they are hyper expressive things and the King Midas myth is all about the golden touch. I wanted to express my imagined pain and terror felt at the moment of turning to gold, and so wanted the audience to feel these feelings too, which then evolved naturally into an exploration of not only pain but emotion in the expressions of the human hand. Initially I chose to use terracotta and metallic earthenware glaze as this was a project with its roots in ancient Greek culture and so I wanted the material choices to have this historical contextual link, as ancient Greeks used a lot of red earthenware and bronze, but as the project evolved the material links became secondary to my primary focus which was to make impactful realistic pieces using the wrought iron glaze for aesthetic reasons.
