Stone and how Michelangelo connects with Cookie Galloway

“The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.” Michelangelo

“If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn't call it genius. ” Michelangelo

Both these quotes are fantasticlaly true. I started shooting for Cookie Galloway a few years ago and she has often said to me that the form she creates only emerges when it wants to show itself. She can start carving and not be quite sure the journey she is on or how it will end. Holding the rough stone in her hands, she' ‘feels’ for the character inside; but teasing it out is a partnership, a symbiosis of will seeking revelation of identity.

Then the second quote becomes meaningful as the character can take long long hours and patience to emerge. The skill and effort which goes into taking rough stone and ending with an equisite smooth finish, alongwith the quirkyness of the form and personality which we see is remarkable.

Cookie says that her creatures don’t always conform to expected anatomy and some emerge as fantastical versions of the familiar with a flavour of another world, time or space. The essence of what she as a sculptor looks for is emotion. She know she has found her creature within when she connects emotionally and there’s a moment of:

“Hello, there you are”

Occasionally Cookie takes on another material, in this case bronze:

However, her heart is in stone, although far from a heart of stone as she pours her soul into her work connecting her emotion with the creatures coming to life. Cookie has a website coming so keep an eye out for her, but if you’re wanting to know more of her and want to connect by all means email me.