Nancy Legge
Nancy Legge
Nancy Legge Description
The abstracted figure has always been a visual preoccupation for Legge – particularly as it relates to the Japanese idea of “zan ketsu no bi” – finding beauty in something missing. Perhaps not beauty alone but that particular kind of beauty that is tied up with meaning - as in poetry where the heart of the matter might be found as much in what is omitted as in what is present.
Legge’s process is one of exploration and discovery. She regards the clay as a collaborator in her process. “I like to feel the breath within the skin of the clay,” she once remarked to an interviewer writing about her work, “When the clay is very malleable, you can capture that sense of life.” Her aim is not to replicate the human figure, but to get at something more essential – the human condition, the transitory nature of all things, and the nobility of the struggle to find meaning.
Nancy Legge Statement
I have always been drawn to the figure and my work continues to explore abstraction and its expressive possibilities. My process is intuitive. One of my favorite sculptors, Isamu Noguchi, describes his way of working: “Many ideas come while I am working. I think of myself as being led by unexpected forces. If it isn’t a surprise, there is something wrong…sometimes I don’t even know what I am doing.”
My abstract sculpture was initially fueled by the Stones of Callanish, an ancient stone circle in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland and more renowned sites like Stonehenge and Avebury in southern England. While the current work still draws on these megalithic forms, I am also drawn to integrating other materials – placing iron directly into the clay, using encaustic on the surface, and creating environments out of stone or recycled metal. Although all of my work begins in porcelain, I am interested in how the “spirit” of a figure shifts as it moves from porcelain, to bronze to glass. My current work also explores surface – from the raw purity of unglazed porcelain to more complex and less predictable shino and raku glazes. I am also working larger and scaling work up.
The fragmented figure has long been a visual preoccupation for me -- particularly as it relates to the Japanese idea of “zan ketsu no bi” – finding beauty in something missing. I draw inspiration from Greek Cycladic sculpture, mummified forms, and the work of Stephen De Staebler. He wrote: “You don’t have to transform clay into something else to find beauty. You have to burn through a lot of pretty work in order to love the gift of clay – its randomness, its tendency to crack and warp. All the things that the perfectionists think are negative qualities are actually positive, if you approach it from a different aesthetic.”