The road I took
I’ve been living in Valdemoro for twenty years but I came to Spain more than forty years ago. In those far-off days I earned my living teaching English in Madrid, and in my free time I began to model clay and make figures. I wanted to become a sculptor.
I was lucky enough to find a master carver and during three and a half glorious years I hammered out my first marble figures in his windy workshop on the outskirts of Madrid. Here are the first. They were bulls.
Lying Bull in red Alicante marble (40cm x 18cm)
Charging bull in gray Calatorado marble (33cm x 44cm)
Bull in the corral of El Batán, Madrid (plaster model)
These heroes of the bull-rings seemed mysteriously imposing and beautiful; and I spent hours and hours struggling to capture their grandeur in clay. I had noticed the same veneration for them in the paintings and etchings of Goya, who always represented the bull as the noble, proud protagonist of the drama of its death.
Observing the bulls at El Batán (1970s)
I was a passionate aficionado. I went as often as I could to see the bullfights in Madrid and I rode on the busses full of enthusiastic bull-lovers to the fairs in the towns and villages around the Capital to see their fights. Those old aficionados taught me a lot, not only about bulls, but about the exciting life of Spain.
I joined the Association of Painters and Sculptors and took part in several collective exhibitions, earning a Special Mention in the biggest of its shows. My largest marble figure until that time was exhibited in the Crystal Palace of the Retiro Park, and at the Cultural Center of the United States I held my first individual exhibition with encouraging success.
In the evening, after leaving my English classes, I hurried through town to draw the live models that posed on the top floor of the Circle of Fine Arts building.
El Círculo de Bellas Artes, Calle Alcalá, Madrid
Pencil drawing (Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, 1979)
Pencil drawing (Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, 1979)
Pencil drawing (Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, 1979)
Pencil drawing (Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, 1979)
Pencil drawing (Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, 1979)
And at the Codina Hermanos foundry I learned the lost wax process and took part in the production of my first bronze figures.
Yawn (bronze 48 cm x 23cm)
Demon (bronze 32cm x 39cm)
Sitting Boy (bronze 20cm x 23cm)
With the help of a small inheritance, my wife and I bought a house and yard in a village near Madrid, which I intended to use as a workshop to hammer out my marble statues.
Our little house and cave in the village of Seseña Viejo
Destiny intervenes
But it wasn’t to be. A strange illness appeared, a muscular contracture of my back and neck that would not go away even with the help of medical specialists, strong drugs, and the massages of expert chiropractors. I had to completely give up sculpture and even reduce to the minimum my work as an English teacher. Those were very hard times.
But I went on…
See Hard Times