SO WHAT IS 'A MOMENT IN TIME' ANYWAY?
I’ve been searching for someway in which to use my modeling and illustration skills to produce art that has real impact, and at last I think I may have found a way, or is that a direction?
A moment in time, the latest sketches by Brent Meheux
Give man any ability to go fast and he will invariably push that ability to the limit in his quest to be first across the line, now deliver to him the internal combustion engine with it’s power to deliver previously unheard of speeds and you’ve got the ingredients for a real adrenaline fueled race, and I for one have developed a real passion for the heroes of that evolution. Not for me the boring computer aided missiles of modern Formula 1, nor the MACH 3 capable jet fighters, no to me the real beauty lies in the V8’s and V12’s used to power the famous racing machines of the last century. That golden age that stretches from the 1920’s through to the 1960’s, from the Schneider Trophy racers of the 1920’s, through the likes of MISS BRITIAN 11 flying across the Solent, or Cambell tearing across the Nevarda desert in Bluebird, and finishing with the epic struggles between the likes of Moss and Fangio on the race tracks of the world in the 1960’s.
Supermarine SB6 by Brent Meheux - an original peice of artwork produced for my degree course
For years now I’ve been fascinated by their steel steads, from an early age I was drawn to the Southampton Hall of Aviation in Southampton, I remember hanging on my Grandfathers hand as we walked around the Spitfire and the Schneider Trophy wining Supermarine SB6, looking up in awe at their out stretched wings. I remember making my first models from Airfix kits and running around the house with the planes held high above me. When set with my first project at Uni there was no hesitation, no doubts, it had to be the Supermarine SB6. As my modeling skills have moved on, and as the years have passed, I’ve tried again and again to evoke these steeds, but alas with little success. The accuracy and detail is there, the quality of the work is fine, but at the end of the day it’s only ever going to be a model, and there lies the crux of the problem. A model is always static, always a tool used to illustrate and inform, at best a museum quality reproduction of something in miniature. A sculpture, well that’s a different beast entirely, here we have something that when done well evokes emotions, that tells a story. So how do you ‘mesh’ the two?
A moment in time, the latest sketches by Brent Meheux
And it is here that the foundation of ‘a moment in time’ lies, my idea has evolved into an obsession to evoke the sense of power and speed that these creations were capable of, a snap shot of a spilt second that tugs at the emotions. The plan is to build these steeds in a cut-away form, with a great deal of the body work and whole sections missing, as if retched from them in their quest for speed, in the way another artist may well blur a background to achieve a similar effect. And then there is the land, and their effect on it, tearing great chunks of it along with them. Achieve this and a model truly becomes a sculpture.
Posted by Brent Meheux - 11/02/12 - Tags - Momentum, speed, a moment in time
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