GAIL High quality representational art at affordable prices
I prefer to sculpt subjects I know about from personal experience. This may be why the WESTERN WOMEN SERIES has been so popular; these are the modern cowgirls out riding, doctoring, fixing fences and windmills today. They aren't trying to prove anything, they are just doing what they love. It is a lifestyle fast vanishing from the American West and that's why I chose to depict it.
The wide open spaces are being carved up by freeways and subdivisions. Some people may be living today on what once was a working ranch and they don't even know it. This is part of their heritage, too.
GAIL has been sculpting in bronze since 1984. Prior to that she worked at Buffalo Bronze Works in Sedona, Arizona and prior to that she was drawing and painting the working cowboys around Seligman, Flagstaff and Winslow, Arizona.
She has been represented by galleries across the US and her works are found in corporate and private collections from the British Isles, Canada, the US, to Australia and Japan.
As northern Arizona native, I grew up in "a backwater where things were still done the old way." With dusty cowboys still riding into town; the Navajos and Hopis in their horse-drawn wagons, I have a memory full of potential subject matter.
As a child and a young woman, I spent many hours on horseback. My parents wouldn't let me have a saddle until I could ride bareback like a centaur! I spent day after day exploring the canyons and mesas, so I developed a strong affinity for nature. And I still ride on a regular basis today.
I spent five years in far northern Minnesota. "I wanted to experience a place very different from the High Desert where I grew up. That's where I observed moose and wolves first-hand and rekindled my interest in wildlife art. For a long while, I feared that all wild things were becoming semi-domesticated like the buffalo. Living on the Canadian border made me realize that isn't so. My bas relief series (like a combination of sculpture, painting and drawing) is predominantly wildlife.
When I was in college, an instructor told me I should be working in three dimensions, he said, "That's where your real talent lies." Eventually I took his advice and I love every aspect of it! I still draw quite a bit, but the only flat painting I do any more is monochromatic.
Every bronze sculptor must have a dedicated team of people to help get such a complicated and multi-stepped process completed. I am relatively unique in that I remain hands-on throughout most of it. This is one reason for my very reasonable prices. No, there is nothing "wrong" with my work; I just want everyone to have the opportunity to own a quality bronze sculpture.
As for the relief carvings, they are all individually reproduced right here in the basement of my log cabin. Many of them I even paint myself, using airbrush as well as bristle brushes.
GAIL insists that the fine art galleries that represent her maintain very affordable pricing. The reason this is possible is that she has her own "finish shop" where molds are made, waxes poured and touched up, metal finished and patinaed. Only the gating (spruing) through de-gating is handled by a foundry.
