Marc Sijan - One of a Kind - Cowgirl Sculpture

We were told this sculpture is one of a kind - commissioned sculpture, very unique Cowgirl by Marc Sijan - Milwaukee, WI. Certification of Authenticity on record with Sijon.
Size: 3/4 of female figure

Colors: Neutral/Jeans/Washed Out Blue

Hat: Authentic Cowboy Style

Shirt: Short Collar Tips & Appropriate Chest Stitching

Added Pistols in One Hand
Approx. size: 36 1/2" x 25".
The card reads: Marc Sijan found what he calls his "Five of two, eyes of blue girl" the hard way. He created her. And he created her in his dream-girl image, just as he does all the other women he pulls red-hot from the kiln in his Milwaukee sculpture studio.

He surrenders most of his life-size figures - merely all feminine forms - to art buyers, but even when they are out of his hands, they aren't out of his mind.

"It's like falling in love with each piece," said the 34-year-old artist. "I usually outgrow them, but there are three or four pieces I still think about. But when she's gone . . . she's gone."

Mr. Sijan, a former art instructor, creates his sculpture figures by a method called Raku, a Japanese-inspired process that produces a cracked surface.

"It's a tricky procedure. Each piece is built of sculpture clay, then fired to a temperature of 1900 degrees. Instead of being left to cool in the kiln, a piece is pulled red-hot from the kiln and placed within seconds in a reduction atmosphere - a closed chamber filled with combustible material that is set on fire to reduce the oxygen in the air," Mr. Sijan said. "That is what produces the cracked surface."

He began creating the figures about 1971. Like all '70s trend setters, these figures are into body language - those ever-so-subtle posturing and gestures that impart unspoken messages.

Take as an example the life-size woman Mr. Sijan sculpted as if she were reclining on the beach.

Her bikini is modest as bikinis go, and a hat demurely covers her eyes, leaving her passive, unsmiling mouth to express here mood. Her torso is gently curved as if accommodating a flat surface, like the bodies of those beauties that smile down from suntan ads on highway billboards.

"I am personally not that interested in the male figure," Mr. Sijan said. "These girls are not Miss America, but they are in good shape, healthy. I am not really after a Playboy kind of thing."

What Mr. Sijan is after is a "spontaneous, very fluid look, somewhat related to Art Nouveau," he said.

"I want to give it a certain amount of life so it doesn't come off rigid. I'm trying to create energy and motion without out-wardly showing a great deal of action - running, leaping.

"This is something Michelangelo did with 'David.' It is sculpture, and yet you could feel the pulse and blood in the arms as if it was life."

Unlike artist Duane Hanson, whose lifelike works mimic people so closely that they confound some who see them in galleries or museums, Mr. Sijan doesn't attempt to make his art imitate life exactly. "The high gloss glaze and cracked Raku finish prohibit that," he said.

"My pieces are somewhat untouchable," he added.

Usually, it's kind of as if I had frozen that figure at some point in time.".