Please join us in welcoming sculptor Nilda Comas to the upcoming Figurative Art Convention & Expo. In this brief Q&A, Comas shares with us her own inspirations for creating art. Enjoy!
Cherie Dawn Haas: What is your inspiration?
Nilda Comas: I am inspired by the human spirit. I feel compelled and challenged to represent this feeling in stone, bronze, or clay. Joy, sadness, love, victory, pain, or suffering have always been the same since the beginning of time.
CDH: Why do you create art?
NC: Ever since I remember, I have created art. Using different mediums I always expressed myself by drawing, sculpting, or painting. Depending on the subject matter, I choose the medium. For me creating is an innate need to “tell a story, a feeling, or an experience” in order to communicate with others. In most cases I choose to communicate through sculpture. I use old techniques in the way I approach the medium and use the figure to relate what my observations are.
CDH: Please tell us a little about your sculpture “Florida, a Seminole Girl.”
NC: I chose to portray a little Seminole girl to celebrate the 500-year anniversary of the state of Florida. I thought that it would be a good opportunity to celebrate the Seminoles for maintaining their culture, their endurance, and their love of Florida. She is dressed in typical Seminole dress and is holding three palmetto leaves, Florida’s tree. Also, she is accompanied by a baby alligator and a dancing crane, both typical from the Everglades. The Everglades was the place where the Seminoles lived and hid to escape extinction. They call themselves “the unconquered.” The composition shows Florida.
Related > Watch a fascinating interview with Eric Rhoads and Joshua LaRock as they discuss the realism movement and how the Figurative Art Convention & Expo came to be:
About Nilda Comas:
Nilda Comas is an international artist. In 2017, Comas was commissioned to create a new statue for National Statuary Hall, inside the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions, museums, and galleries in the U.S. and abroad. She has received numerous grants and awards, some of which include a Bronze medal and two Agopoff Memorial Prizes from the National Sculpture Society, New York; First Prize from Hambro Bank, London; and the Award for Excellence from the Society of Women Artists, London. Her works have been exhibited all over the U.S. and abroad, including at the Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens, Palm Beach; National Arts Club, New York; Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara, Italy; Chiostro di Sant’ Agostino, Italy; Westminster Gallery, London . . . Comas’s works are part of public and private collections in the U.S., Europe, and South America. The last few years Nilda has been working on public art pieces for city parks and private commissions in marble or bronze.
Comas believes that technical mastery is vital to creating fine art. She has studied the techniques of Classical, Renaissance, Baroque, and Modern sculpture in order to perfect her craft. “I aim at pursuing these established standards, which demand the knowledge of composition, perspective, form, draftsmanship, and anatomy as vehicles that will enable me to bring my personal visions to life,“ she wrote. (She has an MFA from the New York Academy of Art and post-graduate studies from Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara). “I feel that by absorbing this knowledge, I can free my creativity and give my art character, sensitivity, and the universal quality of excellence that is only achieved by being fully able to express my inner thoughts while conquering the material.”
Today Comas divides her time between Pietrasanta, Italy, and Fort Lauderdale, where she has her studios. In addition, she has traveled to Vermont; Georgia; Louisiana; Pietrasanta; Ocala, Florida; and San Juan, Puerto Rico to teach “Living Among the Artists” sculpture workshops over the last fifteen years.
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