Lamentation I (Bozetti Series) (2025)

Lamentation I is my passionate expression of grief and sorrow at the state of the world in 2025. As I write this Donald Trump has just announced on Truth Social that he has bombed three nuclear sites in Iran. He is calling for peace and threatening all-out war.

 In the past I would have created works that responded to this event using reconfigured vintage figurines, but recently I have been feeling so worn down by the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, and now the very real possibility of all-out war in the Middle East, that I have shifted my focus to a new technique.

 I am now creating expressive works directly in clay. This fast sketch-like method of sculpting in clay dates from the Renaissance. At the time sculptors like Donatello and Michelangelo created what they called bozzetti as small rough clay studies for larger sculptures in bronze. They are as pure and uncompromising as a pencil sketch.

 My Bozetti series uses this method as a way for me to directly express my angst and sorrow at the current state of the world.

 Lamentation I is inspired by Niccolo dell’Arca’s Lamentation over a dead Christ, circa 1463. In this work a woman cries out in sorrow, her hands open, her veil billowing behind her as she rushes towards to an unknown horror.