Christy Keeney, from Ireland, creates figures which have a two dimensional and three dimensional quality. His pieces start life as two flat slabs of clay pressed into a mould, from which the three dimensional structure emerges. He then draws freely onto the soft clay in a very fluid manner, allowing the clay to dictate what imagery will eventually be applied to its surface.
He says, that his figures are representations of everyday people of no fixed abode. Indeed his people do seem rather untied to conventional life. They possess a willfull persona, that is all too evident in some of the portraits painted by Yeats of people from the West of Ireland.

Having removed the joined slabs of clay from the mold, he begins to draw onto the leather hard clay.

 

 

 

 

 


After smoothing the clay slab into both sides of the mold, Christy applies slip to the edges of each piece and closes the plaster mold to join the slabs. They are left aside for a few hours to harden up, before the mold is removed.

 

The participating artists were always
available for discussion in their workshop areas .

 



Two of Christy's sculpted clay figures.