Description
Slipping Through My Fingers is a sculpture of a headless figure. The body is a shell made of rusted steel siding taken from a barn where the artist grew up. It has one foot, which is made of sculpted and fired clay, and two arms reaching forward and downward, which are made of shaped sheet metal covered on the exterior with cast paper. A patina of oil-stick was applied to all parts of the sculpture giving it a uniform rusty colour.
Statement
Slipping Through My Fingers is a portrait of a moment in time. Two major events coincided with the making of this work: my father had been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, at that time, a lethal form of cancer and the small farm where I grew up had been sold to a large foreign company, not unlike a lot of family farms at that time. The work expresses the sense of life slipping through my fingers. The balance of the figure is intentionally precarious.
Karen Trask & Don Goodes, 2025