Cam Crossley

Cam Crossley

Sculptor & Artist - Curriculum Vitae

Artist Statement

My work is figurative and mostly realistic.

There’s no mystery as to why artists draw, paint and sculpt the human figure and the nude. The human body is both our vehicle and our measure. We have created a world around us based on its dimension and capability. It is the measure of us, of our world. It is who we are reduced to an essence. It so perfectly expresses our human qualities - tenderness, strength, love, joy, effort, tension, ease and more. In combination of figures we can define our relationships in all their complexity. It is our boundary and our liberation. The body is so complex yet always beautiful, it can be endlessly folded, twisted and stretched, capturing light and shadow and always heavy with meaning and emotion.

Life drawing from the model will always be core to my art practice. It forms a large part of my work in charcoal and pastel on paper.

The Ocean

As a younger man I started out to study architecture before departing for a few years and making sculpture and then painting, mostly in pastel. By degrees I came back to architecture and developed my own practice. Architecture remains a passion, it has given me the opportunity to design some great projects in Oman, Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Copenhagen, Basel, Dubrovnik and Bahrain. I am thankful for those experiences, but now the focus for me returns to making art.

The Sunshine Coast has been home for many years now with its mild climate and great beaches, the typical Aussie lifestyle. This is a great place to call home and to make art. The beach is quintessentially part of the Australia psyche, I think for most Australians. It’s a big country but most of us live near the sea. It has always been a part of my life since I was a little boy and continues to be a place of great significance to me as an artist.

The beach is the great democratiser, there we are all one. It’s a family place where we play, where we connect with nature, where men play like kids again. If they surf it’s one of the few ways men can these days be graceful at least for a little while. The beach is all about the body, sunlight, colour, changing light of water and sky.

The ocean and our relationship to it, is a subject to which I return often and is the basis of new series of sculptural works.

Sculpture

The body is the vehicle both of our experience of life and of our individual possibilities for living. In sculpture I want to express strength and movement in the figure, male or female. Due to the long poses required for sculpture using live models (many days of work holding the same pose) the gesture can tend towards the supported, restive and languid. Irrespective of gender, I am interested in the strength within, the character and physicality of the model, the pose and what the two together can represent.

Exhibitions / Public Art Projects

1984

Joint exhibition, ‘Figures and Faces’ - The Buderim Gallery

1985

Solo exhibition, ‘Swimming in the Sea’ - Butter Factory Art Centre Cooroy

1986

Solo exhibition, ‘Swimming in the Sea 2’ - Café Noosa, Noosa Heads

1987

Joint exhibition, Fairhill Gallery, Yandina

2018

Eternal Flame & Memorial, Maroochy RSL – Cotton Tree Cenotaph

2018

Joint exhibition, ‘Earthly Bodies’ - Lamkin Lane Caloundra

2019

Joint exhibition, ‘Art of the Body’ - Butter Factory Art Centre Cooroy