Metal Sculpture - Lean On Me

Many people have asked what is the meaning behind Lean On Me. I prefer the viewer to find their own meaning but here is part of my thought process: This sculpture is metaphor for the unsung heroes - for the down trodden - the big, heavy and primary coloured red and yellow girders are supported by the smaller and calmer blue section. However, it is in fact the smallest and insignificant green (secondary colour) angle that holds the whole sculpture together.

Lean On Me is made from reclaimed scrap metal including RSJ beams and box section. This metal sculpture has been a labour of love, needing countless coats of car paint and lacquer. Not to mention the rubbing down between coats and masking off each section and the hastle of moving it. However, I am very happy with the end result and am looking forward to seeing it on show.

Lean On Me at Sculpture in the Sanctuary 2011

Metal sculpture created from reclaimed RSJ beams

Lean On Me - Sculpture viewed outside the workshop

Metal sculpture created from scrap metal

Lean On Me - Welding the sculpture in the workshop

Created from metal RSJ beams, box section, mild steel angle and car paint.

Sidney Nolan

“Unless we use a tool we do not truly understand it and we learn by using.”

Heidegger

“The contemporary is the one whose eyes are struck by the beam of darkness that comes from his own time.”

Agamben

“...the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”

Duchamp

“Performance’s only life is in the present. Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented [...] It can be performed again, but this repetition itself marks it as “different.” ”

Peggy Phelan

“Performance’s only life is in the present. Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented [...] It can be performed again, but this repetition itself marks it as “different.” ”

Peggy Phelan

“When the present has given up on the future, we must listen for the relics of the future in the unactivated potentials of the past.”

Fisher

“I’m interested in playing with different platforms that aren’t really supposed to be in art, or be the art.”

Amalia Ulman

“It is now not just important, but essential, that institutions stop marginalizing online or non-object-based practices.”

Cornell

“That we are supposed to take care to recycle has almost reached the level of a duty or moral law, and this moral law circulates in the way we symbolize acts of consumption.”

Campbell Jones

“Disease ecologists believe that if we continue on this pathway, this year’s pandemic will not be a one-off event.”

Attenborough

“If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.”

Attributed to Alexander Hamilton, cited by Mika Hunnula

“We need all kinds of artists. We have no need to destroy drawing. We lose so much. This wouldn't happen in music.”

David Hockney

“Like an apparition, something totally unforeseen, possibly lasting for just seconds, may spring from making a few brush strokes, establishing an area of truth which ‘might actually expand into a whole truth’.”

Frank Auerbach

“My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.”

Claude Monet

“When you stop doing something, it doesn't mean you are rejecting the previous work... it's saying I have exploited it enough now and I wish to take a look at another corner.”

David Hockney

“Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.”

Camille Pissarro

“I think that you have to be a bit one track to be an artist...”

Joan Eardley

“Many of my best subjects have resulted from looking back on past journeys.”

Sidney Nolan

“I see drawings and pictures in the poorest of huts and the dirtiest of corners.”

Van Gogh

“…Every day I discover even more beautiful things. It is intoxicating me, and I want to paint it all - my head is bursting…”

Claude Monet

“Painters must speak through paint, not through words.”

Hans Hoffman

“The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.”

David Hockney

“It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work.”

Henry Moore

“Every picture shows a spot with which the artist has fallen in love.”

Alfred Sisley

“All painting, no matter what you are painting, is abstract in that it's got to be organized.”

David Hockney

“Listen to the advice of others, but follow only what you understand and can unite in your own feeling. Be firm, be meek, but follow your own convictions. It is better to be nothing than an echo of other painters.”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

“The creative habit is like a drug. The particular obsession changes, but the excitement, the thrill of your creation lasts.”

Henry Moore

“Beauty in art is truth bathed in an impression received from nature. I am struck upon seeing a certain place. While I strive for conscientious imitation, I yet never for an instant lose the emotion that has taken hold of me.”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

“Everything is beautiful, all that matters is to be able to interpret.”

Camille Pissarro

“Everything you can imagine is real.”

Pablo Picasso

“Creativity takes courage.”

Henri Matisse

“Never lose the first impression which has moved you.”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

“That is why, perhaps, all of us derive Pissarro. He had the good luck to be born in the West Indies, where he learned how to draw without a teacher. He told me all about it. In 1865 he was already cutting out black, bitumen, raw sienna and the ocher's. That's a fact. Never paint with anything but the three primary colours and their derivatives, he used to say me. Yes, he was the first Impressionist.”

Paul Cézanne

“There is no must in art because art is free.”

Wassily Kandinsky

“Painting is the most marvellous activity humans have invented.”

Frank Auerbach

“There's no retirement for an artist, it's your way of living so there's no end to it.”

Henry Moore

“Reality is one part of art; feeling completes it...”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

“You come to nature with all her theories, and she knocks them all flat.”

Pierre Auguste Renoir

“In art, theories are as useful as a doctor's prescription; one must be sick to believe them.”

Maurice de Vlaminck

“You must plan to be spontaneous.”

David Hockney

“What is art? We ought to very simply let it be what the artist says it is.”

David Smith

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Designed and built by Ashley Baldwin-Smith

Metal Sculpture - Lean On Me

Related Links:

Sidney Nolan

Heidegger

Agamben

Duchamp

Peggy Phelan

Peggy Phelan

Fisher

Amalia Ulman

Cornell

Campbell Jones

Attenborough

Attributed to Alexander Hamilton, cited by Mika Hunnula

David Hockney

Frank Auerbach

Claude Monet

David Hockney

Camille Pissarro

Joan Eardley

Sidney Nolan

Van Gogh

Claude Monet

Hans Hoffman

David Hockney

Henry Moore

Alfred Sisley

David Hockney

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Henry Moore

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Camille Pissarro

Pablo Picasso

Henri Matisse

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Paul Cézanne

Wassily Kandinsky

Frank Auerbach

Henry Moore

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Pierre Auguste Renoir

Maurice de Vlaminck

David Hockney

David Smith

How to purchase my work