Two Drawings in Line - Art by Sarah Myers

Abundance with a Cornucopia, Sarah Myers
Minimal line drawing in charcoal

    Here are two drawings with classical inspiration; a figure with an overflowing cornucopia and an Athena with helmet and shield. While the minimal outlines describing them are a style we associate with modernism, it's also true that the ancient Greeks were masters of the very simple, very accurate line that brings so much life and energy to their vase-paintings, and I hope that some of that influence remains in my drawings - even though these quick sketches, made at least partly to express fugitive thoughts on even more transient social media, are very much results of the present era.

Athena, Sarah Myers
Minimal line drawing in charcoal

A Favourite Sculpture - Art by Sarah Myers

Minerva in Pearls, Sarah Myers

With her gentle smile, lowered eyes, pearl necklace and tall helmet, this sculpture remains one of my favourites I have made, and my largest. She is life-scale or perhaps a little more.

Minerva in Pearls, Sarah Myers
Close-up

She was inspired from a sixteenth-century portrait of a young Dutch woman, Margarita Trip. The artist Ferdinand Bol dressed her in costume as Minerva and portrayed Margarita teaching her younger sister Maria Trip. I think in my sculpture I have used the mythological reference slightly more seriously and as a more intregal part - not indeed as homage to the Greek deity Athena (Minerva), but abstractly in praise of wisdom and the wisdom of elder sisters in particular.

Minerva in Pearls, Sarah Myers
Sculpture in stoneware

A sculpture this size takes a huge amount of clay. In this case, she consists of stoneware I mixed by hand and kneaded carefully to remove air pockets. The recipe was designed by my sister Amy Myers - it is a clay of some resistance and strength even in its raw form. The sculpture was then built over a period of three days. I work directly into the clay with a rapidity which is partly to avoid the damage that too-early drying can create, but also to preserve the spontaneity and immediacy of the human touch.

Minerva in Pearls, side view

    All art and photography by Sarah Myers

Minerva in Pearls, Sarah Myers
Detail of face and helmet

Minerva in Pearls, Sarah Myers