Blake Ward

Born to Maxwell W. Ward (1922-2020) and Marjorie Dortha (née Skelton) Ward, (born 1923).

Blake was the youngest of four children.

Encouraged by his parents, his love for art developed through his travels to Europe and the United States as a young man.

"He credits his mother who he said was instrumental in exposing him to art and instilling in him this passion of creation."

Greek sculpture seen in London and Athens remained among the most influential, followed by the works of Auguste Rodin and finally a fascination with the work of Marcel Duchamp.

Ward attended the University of Alberta, where he studied abstract welded steel sculpture under Peter Hide, a graduate from St. Martins School of Art, London, and a student of the English sculptor Anthony Alfred Caro.

Although, figurative sculpture was always the discipline of choice for Ward, it was unavailable in Canada as a field of study.

Ward's University studies also included art history.

He completed a summer course in Rome, which greatly influenced his artistic journey.

"I was fortunate to have had the opportunity early in life to see churches and cities covered in figurative sculpture."

Blake Ward (born June 3, 1956) is a Canadian-born sculptor best known for his contemporary approach to the classical figure.

Contrary to the trend toward abstraction that was taught during his formal education in Canada, Ward's early work centred on the figure.

Blake William Ward was born on June 3, 1956, in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.

Canada and raised in Edmonton, Alberta.

After receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, with honours in 1979, Ward worked for Wardair Canada Ltd., in the US, Mexico, England, France, Spain, Italy and briefly in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

While living in Paris, (1985 - 1989), Ward had the opportunity to delve into 18th and 19th century sculpture, earnestly studying works by Auguste Rodin, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Jean-Antoine Houdon, Aimé-Jules Dalou and Aristide Maillol.

As a pupil of American sculptor, Cyril Heck, Ward learned a classical method of sculpting the figure that was said to have been developed by the ancient Greeks.

Ward has credited Heck as the most knowledgeable teacher he had ever studied under.

"I was lucky and was able to study under an excellent teacher for four years and that was the beginning of what I can only qualify today as both a blessing and an obsession," Beginning in 1985 Ward spent most of his free time studying with Heck in his atelier in the 11th arrondissement of Paris.

The method taught by Heck emphasized the importance of proportions obtained through the measurement of the skeletal structure, and the realisation of the figure by concentrating only on the silhouette of the live model, placing each silhouette side by side in a circle.

This method discouraged any abstraction insisting that the sitter is the dominant reference, above the imagination, in realising the figure in clay.

Other influences on Ward's work are diverse, although Ward credits the most important contemporary persuasion being the sculpture of Stephen De Staebler and Antony Gormley.

For most of his career, Ward has used traditional materials and techniques, creating the original sculpture in water-based modelling clay, and producing a plaster cast of the clay model.

Finally, the finished work was cast in bronze, using the lost-wax method, or alternatively hand carved in Carrera marble.

"He states that it was people that sparked his interest and continue to inspire him."

During the early years, Ward's figurative style was formed by his academic foundation, sculpting representational figures and concentrating on the beauty of the human form.

The events of June 3 and 4 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, inspired the first work of this series.

Evolving through the 1990s and early 2000s into contemporary partial figures created as excerpts of the human condition.

In the words of Art Critic Jacqueline Ceresoli "Bodies in metamorphosis, balanced between apocalypse and the Postmodern, steeped in a lost Classical age, echoed through an ever-evolving Renaissance, in vibrant tension or torsion as they head toward some future utopia."

Ward has been exhibited in France, Monaco, Italy, Germany, England, Singapore, India, Hong Kong, the United States and Canada.

The influence on the work during this period (1990 - 2005) came from the subject matter, as political events of the time charged the artwork and inspired socio-political statements.

Ward used the figure as a language to speak of a political and moral perspective, eventually focusing on the struggle for Human Rights in a series entitled ReThink Collection.

In 2003, Ward was invited to teach figurative sculpture at the University of Hanoi.

This time in Vietnam inspired the creation of the Fragments Collection (2005 - 2012), influenced by the enduring effects of explosive military waste left behind from the many wars in Vietnam.

Consequently, Ward began to deliberately disfigure his completed clay figures as an expression of both tragedy and hope.

Thus, this body of work became art that was meant to foster social engagement.

Specific to a form of Activist Art that Ward refers to as "Intentional Art"; art that conveys a "call to action"; to lend assistance to a cause.

"I think what I'm trying to represent in my work is our tragic and violent nature. I destroy the work in order to create the fragments, and the fragments stand as symbols of hope".

In 2011, Ward began to explore alternative ways to transform the figure.

The resulting Spirit Collection (2011–present), incorporated the idea of a "partial figure" explored earlier in the Fragments Collection.