Jeff Gottfried

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I truly believe that art is a part of me, of the way I look at the world. Without a doubt, sculpture is my medium. When I pick up a piece of clay I feel a deep, direct connection. My challenge is to successfully combine technical accuracy, a strong message, and a powerful design into my sculptures.

I am an introspective person, and so I am drawn to the inner spirit of the subject. My work has an inward focus, a psychological action that often dominates the physical action. I want there to be subtleness to my sculptures, a depth of feeling, and a profound message. When I create a sculpture of a person, for example, I want you to not only understand what the person is doing, but I also want you to look at it and say, I wonder what that person is thinking.

I also try to get the viewer to relate to the sculpture by focusing on universal themes and common experiences. Whether the setting is contemporary or two hundred years ago, I want the people looking at it to be able to relate. Most people have felt happy, sad, alone, pensive, or wistful. Most people have felt loved. These feelings are part of the human condition.

The American West is the perfect setting with which to express these themes. I also believe in the values that built America: industriousness, courage, fortitude, opportunity, confidence in progress, the simpler life, self-reliance. As a sculptor, I am very proud to carry on the legacy of artistically chronicling these values. I do this by telling the stories of the individuals. As they were shaping America, these people experienced hardships and joys, journeys, daily concerns and inner emotions that were just as important to them as our daily struggles are important to us. Often they are the same struggles and the same emotions. I want to personalize them, to make them real, understandable, and timeless. I also want to make them artistically beautiful, just as their struggles and values made them beautiful individually.