Flying High – Bronze Sculpture by Douglas Downs

Dimensions: 14″ wide x 14.5″ tall.

Artist Statement:  “I was born and raised in a small town in Southern California my favorite thing to do as a little kid was to make clay and wax figures and have big battles with them. As I got older, I made caricatures of whatever interested cowboys, Indians, soldiers, animals, rock bands and motorcycles. My big brother Bill had a motorcycle and we used to drag race through the orange groves.

In 1967, after graduating from Whittier College, I traveled around the world filling sketchbooks with people and places I saw, and visiting art museums. Then I went to Claremont Graduate School where I learned some excellent design principles, but my sculpture professor ridiculed figure work and insisted we do abstract geometric sculpture. I dropped out and hung out with a friend in Berkeley, where I made ceramic caricatures which he took to an art gallery. The good news was that they sold, the bad news was that my friend kept the money. It was time to leave again. I moved to Tempe and was a graduate teaching assistant at Arizona State University, which didn’t leave me enough time to sculpt. And my lectures put the students to sleep, so I dropped out again.

In order to learn the technical side of bronze casting, I moved to Santa Monica and worked at Dell Weston Art Bronze Casting. It was there that I acquired the knowledge of the casting process which has allowed me to challenge the limits of what I can create in bronze. Having developed a commitment to my craft, I continue to make my own molds, work the waxes and do the finishing work on the bronzes. Since 1971, I have been a full-time professional sculptor. I live with my wife Anne, a painter and musician, on the Monterey Peninsula. Our son Devon has moved back to Southern California where he rides his Harley. He urged me to get back to sculpting motorcycles, something I had wanted to do for a long time.”