Doug Thielscher’s stone and bronze sculptures are created using a traditional stone carving technique that the artist learned in Pietrasanta, Italy. His classical forms are just as beautiful and powerful as they were centuries ago during the Italian Renaissance, but presented with a fresh, modern twist. His graceful work will be exhibited through Project Zola at the upcoming 29th iteration of the LA Art Show.
Thielscher’s mastery of stone carving spanned two decades, time spent in part working with the artisans/artigiani in Italy in the coastal Tuscany region known for both its marble quarries and bronze foundries. Both marble and bronze are the materials that the artist prefers to work in despite the difficulties inherent in manipulation of these mediums.
It is his ability to capture delicate detail in such resistant materials that is perhaps most striking; his works vibrate with passion and desire, struggle, pain, and triumph. Thielscher’s thematic purpose reveals intense and eternal human feelings and actions. The subjects he creates – hands, feet, faces, horses – all honor the historic art of figurative carving while creating potent images that very much reflect the ethos of today.
The artist explains that he wants his work to truly capture a viewer, compelling moments of reflection. He says that he wants to reveal “the moment of greatest tension” in each visual story. With this in mind, his work is designed to illuminate “the most expressive gestures of a scene…[and] highlight the intensity at that climactic point.”
Much of Thielscher’s work focuses on fragmentary parts of a figure, but he also creates abstract sculptural works that offer multiple interpretations for the viewer. As an artist working in such classic form, he strives to create work that is utterly original and not derivative of anything that has come before but is still visually meaningful and compelling. He also ensures the image he’s creating will present as a full 360-degree view for a multi-sided experience.
The ultimate purpose of his work, he says, is to exemplify the ways in which human beings seek, reach for, and embody the way we reach and strive for goals in our lives. Thielscher’s art expresses that very moment when success or failure hang in the balance.
In his Carrara marble sculpture “Crux,” above, a twisting, reaching arm and perfectly wrought hand, partially wrapped in a ribbon, rise upward from an abstract form below. Of this work he says “I was trying to create the feeling of an old-fashioned spinning top that is just at the point where it starts to lose momentum, and the point kicks out at the bottom… The ribbon can also be seen to symbolize a ribbon that is often given out as a prize in a competition.” For Thielscher, that competition might well be life itself.
Other commanding images include a foot stepping on an amorphous bundle in the Carrara marble “To Be Different,” and the Red Persian travertine, bronze, wood, resin, and stainless steel “Equine XI.” The piece is an entirely unique image of a horse that is also an homage, the artist says, to favorite artists such “Henry Moore, Brancusi, Dali, Tony Cragg, Mondrian, Rodin, Francis Bacon, Giacometti, Alexandros of Antioch, and Anish Kapoor,” in terms of both form and material employed.
Many of Thielscher’s fine works will be viewable through Project Zola at Booth 918 of the LA Art Show. The LA Art Show’s Opening Night Premiere is February 14th, with the show on view via general admission February 15-18th. The event features over 120 galleries and a diverse selection of art, artists and galleries that span over 180,000 square feet of exhibition space.
- Genie Davis; images provided by the artist