Ophelia Maquette by Michael James Talbot

The ‘Maquette’ is the stage on from the ‘Sketch’ in Michael’s creative process. When Michael is designing a sculpture he will often create a sketch (a rough 3D sculpture to experiment with the form, balance and composition of the figure for the intended study). Once he’s happy with the sketch he’ll move on to a scaled down model of the intended piece, which he calls the maquette stage. This will again be a rough scale model but a more fleshed out version.

We were so taken by what we saw in Michael’s studio when we came across the Emergent sketches and maquettes in their raw form, that we persuaded Michael to hone each piece so that we could cast them into these two beautiful stand-alone collections.

It is very rare for Michael to release the sketches or maquettes for a particular body of work so we are delighted to offer this rare opportunity as an exclusive to Calken Gallery.