The first time the father of this woman saw this sculpture, he gasped and left the room. Coming back a moment later, he explained that he had been taken aback because the portrait reminded him uncannily of his own mother.

The first step in creating this commissioned lifesize bust in limestone was to model a clay bust of the subject, with her sitting for each modeling session. Once the clay was finished, I fired it, yielding a terracotta sculpture.

The final limestone carving used this terracotta bust as a model - i.e., one step removed from the original. Toward the end of the process, the subject came in and sat several times as I did final touch-up work to the stone sculpture while working directly from the live model.

Portrait of Linda Price
Limestone, lifesize
© 1975 Michael O'Rourke. Collection of Geoffrey and Linda Price

The terracotta study, modeled directly from life and then used as the model for the limestone final.