About Eric Saint Georges

Born in Paris, France, I moved to the US in 1994.

As far as I can remember I have always been drawing and building things, but it is a

workshop with the sculptor Petrus in 1978, which triggered my passion for sculpture. I loved the clay, the stone, the intimate contact with the material. At that time, I had just completed my education in electrical engineering. Rather than going right away to work, I applied to the “Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts” in Paris, and studied drawing and sculpture there for two years, before spending several months with Petrus, from whom I learned the foundation of my clay technique. However, at the time, a career in art was not really an option for me (or so I thought) and I went back to pursuing a career as an engineer. Eventually, in 2015, after 35 years with limited artistic activity, I finally decided to go back to art full time.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I watch the model, I feel the tension of her movement in my own body. With my knife I make bold cuts in the block of clay, trying to capture the essence of the pose. I have to work fast, keeping the energy flowing, and when I start to see some life emerging from the clay, I feel alive too...

I draw a few lines, quickly, sometimes with a couple of watercolor strokes. I do not think, just keep my focus on the model, enjoy the freedom of my hand moving, and the contact of the charcoal on the paper. Then, once in a while, the drawing is alive and I can feel the movement and the mood of the model, and I see that I have nothing to add to it and that if do, it is going to ruin it...

My current focus is on figurative sculpture and drawing. In my drawings I like to combine

charcoal, ink and watercolor, which allow me to work quickly, my main interest being to capture life and energy in as spontaneous and raw a manner as possible. I draw almost exclusively from life, my preference being very short poses. I do not try to tell a story, as much as to capture the moment, the pose, the movement, the mood. I enjoy carving once a while a stone or a beautiful piece of wood, but I create most of my sculptures in clay, either from life or from my life drawings. I then cast them in bronze, which is time consuming but very rewarding.

I spend now my time between my studio in Los Gatos (CA), various life drawing sessions in the Bay area, the West Valley College foundry and teaching life drawing and sculpture.

My longer term objective is to expand my art to other mediums, and to use my  engineering

background to combine art and technology.