Southwest Art Magazine Barry Eisenach
Something had been bothering Barry Eisenach for days. He thought he might have to scrap his latest sculpture altogether if he couldn’t figure it out. He had done it before. He simply would not let go of a sculpture that didn’t rise to his standards. Then one afternoon as he walked past the bust of his young ballerina, he ran his finger down the bridge of her nose erasing the slight bulb at the very end. Suddenly he knew what it was. He reworked her gaze turning it down and away giving her the appearance of apprehension and thereby saved and named her.
“Artist plays god,” Eisenach says with a laugh.
Eisenach has a lot to smile about these days. He was selected for the Loveland Sculpture in the Park Exhibition his first time out and that troublesome ballerina “Apprehension” was chosen for the National Sculpture Society Exhibition in New York. Not bad for a kid who grew up in Broomfield, Colorado in the 50’s where, he explains, “You were a little strange if you were into art. There was no access to museums or galleries. I was mostly self-taught.”
Eisenach went to Colorado State University to study art but he quickly discovered that the program lacked what he felt he needed. “I learned about to a lot of new and different things but there was very little instruction. It was like trying to build a house without a foundation.” In fact, when he tried to get a job after leaving the university he was told he had lots of talent but would need to go to art school. He enrolled in the Colorado Institute of Art and upon graduation landed a job in a large advertising firm. But, after several years of working in illustration, Eisenach was ready to focus on his sculpting career. Then he and his wife divorced. Both financial pressures and raising a son forced him back to illustration and a job with a Fortune 500 company.
Now, twenty years later, Eisenach’s son (who he has used as model for several sculptures) has almost completed a degree in Aerospace allowing his artist father to once again follow his passion, which was rekindled one a trip to Paris several years ago. He recalls sitting for hours in front of the Rodin sculptures and marble busts of French royalty in the Louve and feeling completely overwhelmed by it all. When he returned from that trip he took a week-long workshop in Loveland, Colorado with Don Gale, an instructor from the Lyme Institute in Connecticut to see if this was truly the direction he wanted to pursue. He hasn’t looked back.
Eisenach’s style is fluid, almost painterly. It is as if he approaches his work like a painting – he doesn’t detail everything, or give every area the same stroke. And in so doing, Eisenach controls the viewer’s eye and tells him, “Look here, this is what I want to show you, this is the most important thing.” In the sculpture of a 53-year-old dancer the work seems to rise up out of the strength of the model’s articulate toes and feet into the sinewy legs and deeply defined thighs and buttocks. Only after following the curve of the dancer’s forward thrust chest do you see that he is an older man, most likely past his prime for performance on stage.
Eisenach does not hold to any set way of beginning a sculpture. He explains, “Sometimes I’ll start at a foot and work my way up. Other times I’ll block everything in and go back and straighten it out modeling the various shapes. A lot of times I start at the head and if I can get it to work I’ll finish the piece. I let the subject dictate. If there is something I want to emphasize about a pose I’ll make sure that is working first.”
Figurative subject matter has always been a focus for Eisenach. He believes his affinity for the human form stems from his childhood. “Ever since I was a little kid I’ve always enjoyed drawing people. I don’t know whether it’s because I was shy. Maybe that’s my way of interacting with people.” And Eisenach said, “My figures aren’t about action, my Indians aren’t warriors attacking. It’s a more introspective feeling I’m trying to get. I want to capture intelligence, a piece of their spirit. I guess that’s what I’m trying to do, steal a little bit of soul.”
His latest piece was inspired by an Andrew Wyeth illustration of a Native American fishing with a hand line from a birch-bark canoe. The sculpture he is creating has sent him to the history books for in-depth descriptions of birch bark canoes and how they were constructed. He has chosen to follow a similar path in the design and creation of his clay canoe that the original creators did back in the late 1800’s. “With this piece, there is a structure under the clay,” Eisenach said. “There’s some fairly good linen paper and wood. I took formica and cut it into strips to make the ribs of the canoe and then covered everything in clay.”
Eisenach does not generally sculpt lots of props in his work but is instead more interested in the statement the figure makes. Perhaps that is why he moves between energetic and dynamic ballet and quiet, serene Native American subjects so easily. The figure, it seems, is not just a figure but a vehicle to express an emotional response he has with the gestures, reach and flow of his own life. “I’ve always been fascinated with the human form. I’m always looking for different ways to portray the human form. What do I look for in a live model? A lot of times it’s just someone who is willing to do it,” he says, laughing. “I’m really interested in different body types, the way different bodies look. I like to romanticize. Everybody is different -- I try to get a likeness when I’m working with a model” And he takes to heart a story about Nicolai Fechin teaching a class of students painting apples. Fechin asked one of the students what he was doing. When the man said he was painting an apple, Fechin told the student, “We’re not painting an apple we’re painting this apple.”
Sometimes he works with a story in mind but stays flexible when sculpting incase things take a different turn. “The piece called Legacy started out as a Native American holding two sculls. It was going to be a Sun Dance piece but I didn’t like how it was evolving. I changed it so that he is now holding a peace pipe. I like the feeling that he could be either giving or receiving the pipe. It’s kind of like the Impressionists, they left it up to your eye to mix those colors. I like to leave it up to the viewer to decide.”
Like any good artists Eisenach tries to remain objective yet philosophical about his work. He said, “Sometimes I get carried away with a sculpture when it’s going really well. It’s almost as if it’s sculpting itself, kind of like you’re just along for the ride. Like being in the zone. Then sometimes it feels likes a struggle from the get-go but somehow at the end everything comes together and I feel like I pulled one out of the fire. And sometimes I’ll have one that just goes back into the clay heap.”
A fan of Andrew Wyeth, Eisenach cites artists like Joaquin Sorolla, Nicolai Fechin and August Rodin, as well as modern day artists George Carlson, Floyd DeWitt, Ned Jacobs, Burt Silverman and Ken Bunn as sources of inspiration for his own work. “I’m a traditional realist, obviously, but I like work that is different from mine – looser or tighter, lots of texture or very refined," he said. "With all these artists, when you look at their work they all are very introspective. Sometimes I try to figure out why I do what I do – I think we all have days when we sit around and wonder if this is important or not. I think it’s got to be important: people need beauty in their lives. Hopefully someone will look at my work and relate to an expression or some emotion.”
Eisenach plans to continue inventing with his work and may even try wildlife. He is drawn to the deconstructive work by Manuel Neri and the abstract splatter paintings of Jackson Pollack. At some point, he would like to experiment with fragmenting sculpture and adding non-objective color to the pieces. He envisions taking his work in a more edgy direction but whatever happens, he says he’ll follow the work wherever it takes him.