Eric Saint Georges
As far as I can remember I have always been drawing and building things, but it is a workshop with the sculptor Petrus in 1978, which triggered my passion for sculpture. I loved the clay, the stone, the intimate contact with the material. At that time, I had just completed my education in electrical engineering. Rather than going right away to work, I applied to the “Ecole
Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts” in Paris, and studied drawing and sculpture there for two years, before spending several months with Petrus, from whom I learned the foundation of my clay technique. However, at the time, a career in art was not really an option for me (or so I thought) and I
went back to pursuing a career as an engineer. Eventually, in 2015, after 35 years with limited artistic activity, I finally decided to go back to art full time.
I watch the model, I feel the tension of her movement in my own body. With my knife I make bold cuts in the block of clay, trying to capture the essence of the pose. I have to work fast, keeping the energy flowing, and when I start to see some life emerging from the clay, I feel alive too...
I draw a few lines, quickly, sometimes with a couple of watercolor strokes. I do not think, just keep my focus on the model, enjoy the freedom of my hand moving, and the contact of the charcoal on the paper. Then, once in a while, the drawing is alive and I can feel the movement and the mood of the model,
and I see that I have nothing to add to it and that if do, it is going to ruin it...
My main focus is on figurative sculpture and drawing. In my drawings I like to combine charcoal, ink and watercolor, which allow me to work quickly, my main interest being to capture life and energy in as spontaneous and raw a manner as possible. I draw almost exclusively from life, my preference being very short poses. I do not try to tell a story as much as to capture the moment, the pose, the movement, the mood. While I enjoy carving once a while a stone or a beautiful piece of wood, I create most of my sculptures in clay, either from life or from my life drawings. I then cast them in bronze, which is time consuming but very rewarding.
I spend now my time between my studio in Los Gatos (CA), various life drawing sessions in the Bay area, the West Valley College foundry and teaching life drawing and sculpture.
