Len Gifford
Len Gifford was born in London and initially studied and practiced civil and structural engineering and was responsible for designing a great many buildings and bridges. However, in his mid thirties he decided to take a sabbatical from engineering and indulge full-time his fascination with sculpture and graduated with a BA (Hon) degree in Fine Art from Leicester University in 1983.
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Len’s work is about movement and the human body. Through semi-realistic sculpture he tries to capture movements seen in dance, gymnastics, yoga and aerobics. He is much influenced by the soft rounded curves found in the female form and contemporary dance rather than the harder more erect poised forms found in the male form and traditional ballet.
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He aims to capture a moment in time: a seated girl rising, the maximum arch that a body can describe in a particular movement; a figure on the point of balance, move the figure a fraction of an inch and you lose the essence of that movement. The figures are often supported on visual columns of air thus giving the impression of defying gravity. The more he studied these movements the more he realised how easily the human body is able to communicate ideas and mood through it's body shapes.
10 years ago he was approached by the publisher of 'Pleasure Bound' a bondage magazine to produce 10 figurines for them to sell. This developed into the 'Bondage Collection and then the Erotic Collection, both can be seen on his website.
New website coming soon
07985 420 925
Copyright Len Gifford© 2008