I was delighted to receive notice of the completion of a major commission by Thomas Marsh.
It is of the Holy Spouses, Patrons of the Unborn and is located at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Bakersfield, CA.
I love the restrained use of color as applied to the bronze. Also, note that the faces are not portraits of a model, but rather they are idealized, taking inspiration from the Greek ideal, that was used by High Renaissance and Baroque masters. This is something that is so important in sacred art, yet is not understood by so many artists who work in naturalistic styles. I explain the reasons why idealization is important in sacred art in an earlier blog post here.
Beautiful art is as important to the creation of a culture of life as the noble political battles fought by those in the Right to Life movement, I suggest!
Below is a detail of the original clay model that the cast was based on:
Thomas has been an advisor to me in the creation of the Masters of Sacred Arts program at www.Pontifex.University, which offers the all-round formation, the Catholic inculturation that would tell an artist how to direct his brush or chisel, and a patron which artists to commission!
He is also the teacher of Deborah Samia who has created one of the two online studio classes required for the MSA program, an Introduction to Sculpting the Figure.
