Shray: Artist Statement

”Rodin, What did you tell me?  What were you trying to say to me as I studied you all those years?” – “Human emotion in movement!”

”Moore, How far were you saying I could push the planes, the positive negative space?”  “Push the form to the edge but don’t ignore the human experience!”

”Brancusi — Simplicity?” –“Yes!”

I learned from all your voices to combine the way I see in a cubistic-geometric way with a recognizable sense of humanity while pushing towards abstraction - in essence, to combine figurative and abstract without losing the human emotion so as to capture movement in stillness.

I see the emotion in form, the hard lines, the curves and allow them to carry the human condition through and around those negative, positive spaces  I am concerned, as I think Rodin, Moore, and Brancusi were, with the fine line between the individual and humanity and how to achieve this without succumbing to sentimentality. This is one of the great puzzles figurative sculptors face. My approach is to let the form carry the emotion.  This is not often undertaken in abstract contemporary sculpture today, at least in terms of love, kindness and beauty.

 

Let my sculptures speak to you as they do to me, in a soft whisper as I pass by them, reassuring me that we all have the same beauty within. — Shray

 

My objective as an artist is to create a piece that is not a static pose but one where the hard metal becomes the flesh and bone of humanity; to reveal a strong sense of universality and invite a personnel identification, to capture a moment, a quality of pureness and allow the viewer inside the work, to identify each in their own way with the story.

My mother made it safe for me to paint outside the lines ... so I was never afraid.

 

There have been many people who have supported me in my career and in my life. Yet, only one is so profound and filled with so much love ... I dedicate my art — my world — to my husband, Neal.