Biography:
Beatrice Hoffman studied sculpture at the Norwich School of Art from 1986-9. She is based in the Midlands and is working mostly in solid and coiled clay, creating sculptures both figurative and abstract to be cast in bronze and bronze resin. They vary in size between 25 and 100 cm height.
Her other carreer as an arts educator and therapist makes her very aware of the psychological and expressive potential of sculptures.
Having achieved a good response from galleries in Britain and abroad with sculptures for the domestic and garden environment, she is currently exploring working on a larger scale in a more public setting. She is particularly interested in find ing forms that resonate with the public, and with a particular location.
Artist Statement:
Creating my sculptures, I experience the ebb and tide of external sensations, and internal moods and feelings more intensely; the seclusion of the studio, and the seemingly repetative working process of refining surfaces enables a mixture of compulsion and reflection.
Stroking, pressing, squeezing, scraping, shaving, hacking, slapping the form into shape, the completed sculpture contains, condenses and transforms the feelings that went into its creation, and holds them in one cohesive object.
Beauty to me is simplicity, clarity, concentration and a degree of abstraction. It must extend beyond decorative prettiness. Beauty is to be able to hold contradictions, tensions and ambivalence – it is a balance kept despite conflict.
I am fascinated by ”strong form”. With both figurative and abstract sculptures, I search for a sense of fullness contrasted with negative shapes; sharp angles between surfaces, juxtaposed with smoothness.
I am influenced by C.G. Jungʼs ideas of archetypes and equally by childhood memories of Sunday visits to a catholic church filled with Baroque carvings .I reconnect with the tradition of sculptures seen in places of worship, and work towards a spiritually potent image used in a secular context.
Themes on the interface of mythology, psychology and spirituality – mental states, relationships, human identity, maternal love, and solitude are universal experiences that influence my artwork.
I hope to enable engagement and contemplation: for the viewer to find reflected in my sculptures a feeling, experience or preoccupation, and through this empathy, solace, and understanding derive some healing .
An interview with Beatrice Hoffman by Kay Wolf for the German cultural magazine “Frau Über Vierzig” in 2005
Kay Wolf: Your sculptures of heads describe psychological and spiritual states of minds:
Beatrice Hoffman: My series of heads revolve around the psychological themes of human identity, gender and relationships. In this context I am drawn to sculpting in clay, stone or plaster as the most perfect medium to express feelings through form . So many emotional states find a metaphor in the physical nature and demands of sculpture; notions like gravity, balance, cavities, protuberances, directions, angles, surfaces, push and pull all have their emotional equivalent, and can all be exploited to find an equivalent for feelings that are by their nature invisible.
So spiritual issues become tangible and solid, and manifest into this world. Sculpture is particularly suited to describes a journey or process, a movement through time and place, as one walks around it and witnesses the transformation. This 360 degree circumventing also allows for contradictions or multiple realities to be included, held together and resolved.
Kay: Your sculpture tell stories. For instance the double heads, with their theme of relationship…
Beatrice: With Sun and Moon, relationship is not yet developed. Instead of man and woman, there is the internal balance within each one of us between male and female. The image derives from fairy tales and myths that tell of celestial constellations. In distinction to most European archetypes, the man on the left is the moon and he looks rather ascetic, while the sun-woman on the right dominates with her round forms. I wanted to use these contrasts, and take the challenge to unite them in one form.
Kay: In Man and Woman, Man and Woman both participate equally in the whole. Yet, if you look closely, you will remark that she is turning away.
Beatrice: Henry Moore inspired me with his topic of relationship – both formally, and emotionally. To describe the whole, he emphasises its parts, and their relationships towards each other.
With ”Man and Woman”, the original egg has split in two halves, and one half is pushing itself over the other – there is a kind of ambivalence. The woman wants to go, and she can’t, or doesn’t – not yet. Movement is frozen, caught in a permanent state of flux.
With Nurturing , there is as similar movement of the right head away from the left. I thought of a human bird chick (on the left), that greedily demands food of its mother – pecking kissing, feeding. The space between the two is cramped. Within their shared closeness it shows need, dependency on the one hand, and the longing to find freedom from the responsibility of care on the other.
Kay: With the sizes of the heads being quite similar, there is ambivalence – are they mother and child, or lovers reproducing that first intense love affair at the beginning of life?
Beatrice: With Mother and Child, I enlarged the abstract, concave space, that both binds them together and holds them apart. This time, the left , larger head inclines towards the other, rather than pulling away. Her hair doubles up as her protective space, in which she cradles the child. This sculpture also incorporates tinges of the adult man/woman relationship – depending on one’s angle of perception. The woman nurtures and protects the man as the son he has once been – and for that, he worships her, raises her to become a saint – the Madonna of Christian history.
Kay: And whether this symbiosis is a mainly happy one, depends on one’s early experiences. There are widely differing perspectives in that, and they are all contained in one sculpture. This explains the various, and individual ways of responding to one single work of art.
Beatrice: With sculpture, you make one fleeting moment, expression, or mood eternal. There might be parallels with the Tibetan Buddhist concept of the “Bardo” – the soul is caught in one expression, one emotional experience, for as long as it is identified with it. Sculpture freezes this moment for us to perceive it better – see it, value it, understand it – and then possibly outgrow it, and let it pass.
Kay: For me it is the Buddha that causes a healing resonance.This sculpture I would love to have standing in my garden, and build a shrine around her…His smile is touching. he could also be a child, a wise child, that does not want to become adult…
Beatrice: Here we do not deal anymore with man or woman, but with human beings. .. There is inner wealth which is emptiness and space.
There is strength in the posture, even if the head is bent forward. This is not defence, or retreat – he stands in the middle of life. But she stops in her tracks – he indicates: what happens outside, is not quite as important as it appears.”
Patricia Preece in Art Space 32/p25 (2010) about Nurturing
This work shows two faces locked together in the most intimate way, but their gaze is strangely distant. The strength of the work is the tension that exists between the two heads which are bound together. The mother figure angles her cheek to her child in a responsive manner but faces away with her eyes fixed to the horizon.
At the same time the child figure nuzzles the mother, but its kiss is a pout that tells us that it knows that the time for nurturing is over. The nurturer and the nurtured are also the rejecter and the rejected – to encapsulate this using such economy of means is an amazing feat.
It is this that makes the figure truly modern. I love you, says the big head, but its time you moved on – me and your dad have got things we want to do.
Three Poems by Tom Corbett, written on the occasion of the Bergh Apton sculpture trail
Gothic (Triple Head or God head)
I
am
born
of a single
desire.
I digest life,
have certainty in charge of
my own destiny.
Head swooping up
lofty cathedral like,
eyes suspended within
gothic arches,
three dimensional
stretching into self.
Walk around
touch the soft implosion
of cheek
on jowl,
mould the perfect shape
of curve
to skull.
Buddha Head
Without ego
is tranquility
in the absoluteness of love
is peace
is contentment.
Racer Man
You
are pushed
into macho man
a power man
a racerman
athlete
poised
beautifully shaped
compacted
into elegant curves
in
a split
second
the inner boy
is lifted
revealing
the disguise
before the
power man
racer man
athlete
slips obliquely
into determined mouth
Janus (Man and Woman)
Janus
dissembler
head static
segment
split
head
mental
replication
space
shifting notches
going nowhere
who pulls who?
Renunciation
No eye
To eye
resignation
Need
mouth
contained
Echo
Passive
unresisting
submission
STAY
Beatrice Hoffman studied sculpture at the Norwich School of Art from 1986-9. She is based in the Midlands and is working mostly in solid and coiled clay, creating sculptures both figurative and abstract to be cast in bronze and bronze resin. They vary in size between 25 and 100 cm height.
Her other carreer as an arts educator and therapist makes her very aware of the psychological and expressive potential of sculptures.
Having achieved a good response from galleries in Britain and abroad with sculptures for the domestic and garden environment, she is currently exploring working on a larger scale in a more public setting. She is particularly interested in find ing forms that resonate with the public, and with a particular location.
Artist Statement:
Creating my sculptures, I experience the ebb and tide of external sensations, and internal moods and feelings more intensely; the seclusion of the studio, and the seemingly repetative working process of refining surfaces enables a mixture of compulsion and reflection.
Stroking, pressing, squeezing, scraping, shaving, hacking, slapping the form into shape, the completed sculpture contains, condenses and transforms the feelings that went into its creation, and holds them in one cohesive object.
Beauty to me is simplicity, clarity, concentration and a degree of abstraction. It must extend beyond decorative prettiness. Beauty is to be able to hold contradictions, tensions and ambivalence – it is a balance kept despite conflict.
I am fascinated by ”strong form”. With both figurative and abstract sculptures, I search for a sense of fullness contrasted with negative shapes; sharp angles between surfaces, juxtaposed with smoothness.
I am influenced by C.G. Jungʼs ideas of archetypes and equally by childhood memories of Sunday visits to a catholic church filled with Baroque carvings .I reconnect with the tradition of sculptures seen in places of worship, and work towards a spiritually potent image used in a secular context.
Themes on the interface of mythology, psychology and spirituality – mental states, relationships, human identity, maternal love, and solitude are universal experiences that influence my artwork.
I hope to enable engagement and contemplation: for the viewer to find reflected in my sculptures a feeling, experience or preoccupation, and through this empathy, solace, and understanding derive some healing .
An interview with Beatrice Hoffman by Kay Wolf for the German cultural magazine “Frau Über Vierzig” in 2005
Kay Wolf: Your sculptures of heads describe psychological and spiritual states of minds:
Beatrice Hoffman: My series of heads revolve around the psychological themes of human identity, gender and relationships. In this context I am drawn to sculpting in clay, stone or plaster as the most perfect medium to express feelings through form . So many emotional states find a metaphor in the physical nature and demands of sculpture; notions like gravity, balance, cavities, protuberances, directions, angles, surfaces, push and pull all have their emotional equivalent, and can all be exploited to find an equivalent for feelings that are by their nature invisible.
So spiritual issues become tangible and solid, and manifest into this world. Sculpture is particularly suited to describes a journey or process, a movement through time and place, as one walks around it and witnesses the transformation. This 360 degree circumventing also allows for contradictions or multiple realities to be included, held together and resolved.
Kay: Your sculpture tell stories. For instance the double heads, with their theme of relationship…
Beatrice: With Sun and Moon, relationship is not yet developed. Instead of man and woman, there is the internal balance within each one of us between male and female. The image derives from fairy tales and myths that tell of celestial constellations. In distinction to most European archetypes, the man on the left is the moon and he looks rather ascetic, while the sun-woman on the right dominates with her round forms. I wanted to use these contrasts, and take the challenge to unite them in one form.
Kay: In Man and Woman, Man and Woman both participate equally in the whole. Yet, if you look closely, you will remark that she is turning away.
Beatrice: Henry Moore inspired me with his topic of relationship – both formally, and emotionally. To describe the whole, he emphasises its parts, and their relationships towards each other.
With ”Man and Woman”, the original egg has split in two halves, and one half is pushing itself over the other – there is a kind of ambivalence. The woman wants to go, and she can’t, or doesn’t – not yet. Movement is frozen, caught in a permanent state of flux.
With Nurturing , there is as similar movement of the right head away from the left. I thought of a human bird chick (on the left), that greedily demands food of its mother – pecking kissing, feeding. The space between the two is cramped. Within their shared closeness it shows need, dependency on the one hand, and the longing to find freedom from the responsibility of care on the other.
Kay: With the sizes of the heads being quite similar, there is ambivalence – are they mother and child, or lovers reproducing that first intense love affair at the beginning of life?
Beatrice: With Mother and Child, I enlarged the abstract, concave space, that both binds them together and holds them apart. This time, the left , larger head inclines towards the other, rather than pulling away. Her hair doubles up as her protective space, in which she cradles the child. This sculpture also incorporates tinges of the adult man/woman relationship – depending on one’s angle of perception. The woman nurtures and protects the man as the son he has once been – and for that, he worships her, raises her to become a saint – the Madonna of Christian history.
Kay: And whether this symbiosis is a mainly happy one, depends on one’s early experiences. There are widely differing perspectives in that, and they are all contained in one sculpture. This explains the various, and individual ways of responding to one single work of art.
Beatrice: With sculpture, you make one fleeting moment, expression, or mood eternal. There might be parallels with the Tibetan Buddhist concept of the “Bardo” – the soul is caught in one expression, one emotional experience, for as long as it is identified with it. Sculpture freezes this moment for us to perceive it better – see it, value it, understand it – and then possibly outgrow it, and let it pass.
Kay: For me it is the Buddha that causes a healing resonance.This sculpture I would love to have standing in my garden, and build a shrine around her…His smile is touching. he could also be a child, a wise child, that does not want to become adult…
Beatrice: Here we do not deal anymore with man or woman, but with human beings. .. There is inner wealth which is emptiness and space.
There is strength in the posture, even if the head is bent forward. This is not defence, or retreat – he stands in the middle of life. But she stops in her tracks – he indicates: what happens outside, is not quite as important as it appears.”
Patricia Preece in Art Space 32/p25 (2010) about Nurturing
This work shows two faces locked together in the most intimate way, but their gaze is strangely distant. The strength of the work is the tension that exists between the two heads which are bound together. The mother figure angles her cheek to her child in a responsive manner but faces away with her eyes fixed to the horizon.
At the same time the child figure nuzzles the mother, but its kiss is a pout that tells us that it knows that the time for nurturing is over. The nurturer and the nurtured are also the rejecter and the rejected – to encapsulate this using such economy of means is an amazing feat.
It is this that makes the figure truly modern. I love you, says the big head, but its time you moved on – me and your dad have got things we want to do.
Three Poems by Tom Corbett, written on the occasion of the Bergh Apton sculpture trail
Gothic (Triple Head or God head)
I
am
born
of a single
desire.
I digest life,
have certainty in charge of
my own destiny.
Head swooping up
lofty cathedral like,
eyes suspended within
gothic arches,
three dimensional
stretching into self.
Walk around
touch the soft implosion
of cheek
on jowl,
mould the perfect shape
of curve
to skull.
Buddha Head
Without ego
is tranquility
in the absoluteness of love
is peace
is contentment.
Racer Man
You
are pushed
into macho man
a power man
a racerman
athlete
poised
beautifully shaped
compacted
into elegant curves
in
a split
second
the inner boy
is lifted
revealing
the disguise
before the
power man
racer man
athlete
slips obliquely
into determined mouth
Janus (Man and Woman)
Janus
dissembler
head static
segment
split
head
mental
replication
space
shifting notches
going nowhere
who pulls who?
Renunciation
No eye
To eye
resignation
Need
mouth
contained
Echo
Passive
unresisting
submission
STAY