Sculptors today tend to be those who draw and those who never draw. I need to draw and indeed, my sculptures, black and white plaster and wood reliefs, tend to be part drawing, part sculpture, and part painting. It is such a pleasure to get back to my sculptures after a time of just drawing or sketching.

I’ve drawn and sculpted a great deal from models posing in my studio and in drawing workshops. I love to work on one pose many times. When I’m unable to work for an extended period of time on a given day, I try at least to sketch often from works that I love and want to understand better. I’ve been drawing from reproductions of Cézanne’s paintings of bathers for many years. The Battle of the Sexes comes from the small and wonderful Bathers in a Landscape in the Cone Collection. I have a good-sized reproduction of it in my studio and a postcard of it that I carry around with me for sketching. I’m crazy about this painting, and have done many sketches and two reliefs from it. Actually, Battle was done primarily from the Cézanne, but also from studies of Matisse’s paintings of bathers and his figure sculptures, and from Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Both Matisse and Picasso were extremely moved and influenced by Cézanne’s bathers series, and I wanted an exchange with all three of them.

When I draw I’ve sometimes used graph paper and done quick responses to a pose that interests me. In The Model From Five Chairs to His Right, I kept drawing quickly and moving from chair to chair to record slightly different interpretations of the same pose. This has led to certain sculptures in which I moved along one side of the model and combined two or three views into one piece.

The theme of the Three Graces has been seen before by other artists as one figure shifting back and forth, front to back to front; a three of one; or a trinity of the female. My Three Graces are three different women, individualized but interconnected. The breast of the left figure can also be seen as the elbow and arm of the center figure; the right arm of the left figure is also part of the back of the center figure. The leg of the left woman may also suggest the see-through skirt that’s been used in paintings of the Three Graces. I wanted a sculpture that could be partly transparent, like some of my favorite stages and forms of animal life. I wanted a sculpture that could sometimes be immaterial. I like to see into things. I like different things to be suggested, various aspects to be revealed. The figure on the right comes partly from the way men suggest a curvy woman, shaping with their hands. Something like the number 8, not quite closed at any of the center point, but definitely, if you think about it, a bowlegged woman, which I suggested with, I hope, a bit of grace.

The Goddess was part of a series that I worked on from several Christs in Majesty from Romanesque and Gothic relief sculptures. I loved the image and wanted to combine it with the image of a woman god, strong and beautiful. The pose seemed to me more of a woman’s pose, anyway. The mandorla combined with the Christ figure suggested to me that there must be a female symbol along with the figure of the male God, even in a medieval work.