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Laughing Rose by Bob Belderson
Chalk is Bob’s preferred medium because it is so easy to carve into wonderful shapes. He and Carol used to go to Birling Gap on the South Downs, to clamber up and down the steps hauling great boulders of chalk. Once back at home, Bob would carve away with just a knife and chisel, smoothing off with sandpaper – all on a tray in the living room with chalk flying everywhere and children playing around.
He chose not to sell these chalk sculptures because they were so fragile. He tried to harden them by soaking them in water glass, but still wouldn’t sell them because they were breakable. Eventually, he was so impressed by people asking if they could buy his sculptures that he ventured to cast them in resin.
One of the first gallery owners he approached turned his nose up, saying, “I’m not having any of that in my gallery. It’s got to be bronze - proper bronze.” That egged Bob on to get his work cast in bronze, a material he has worked with ever since. Bob says, “It put me into a totally different price league really, whereas resins were reasonably priced.”
Bob is inspired by Henry Moore who, according to Bob, “always held the view that the landscape up in Yorkshire was part of his background that got him going.” He also draws inspiration from Auguste Rodin, Michelangelo and Gustav Klimpt’s style as a painter, because Bob thinks his own style is a bit art nouveau, with the flowing shapes of his sculptures.
“The Forbidden Fruit” is Bob’s favourite sculpture in chalk. It was so difficult to carve from one chalk boulder. It won the prize for Best Sculpture in the Farnham Maltings Exhibition. “Rachael Weeping” is his favourite among the bronzes because it was one of his first, and was thought by others to be one of his best pieces. It sold well (particularly in the gallery which first rejected him!).
Bob’s work ethic is “Work hard enough but not too much because if you work too much you affect your family closeness. To be a great artist you need to be single-minded and work at such intensity and for so long that everyone else suffers.”
The Struggle by Bob Belderson