“I have a head stand, a piece of wood with a stick in the middle going up with brackets to support it and a little bit of wire at the top,” she says.
“I just place bits of clay on top of bits of clay and I measure with callipers. I go backwards and forwards from the sitter to their bust. If you want to get an absolute likeness, the more measuring you do, the better. That’s how it works.”
“First of all, you have to get the shape of the head. That’s the important thing. It’s a matter of practice. Then you add on the features.”
“The ears have to be in the right place, the measurements are very important from the chin to the ear, but then, when you’re doing that, if the measurement isn’t right from the cheek to the cheek it’ll be wrong from here to here.”
“The hardest part’s the eyes and the mouth. Getting the look is so hard. There’s such a fine line between getting it and not getting it. If you don’t get it when you’re doing sculpture you could end up spending so long trying to get it and it’s frustrating.”
“I’ve got a gift for getting it right, there’s no doubt about it. I’ve taught loads of people but very few had that gift. The others still became very good sculptors and produced wonderful things but may never have been able to get the likeness of a face.”
“Each piece of clay I put on has to be important. It’s not something I can just take way later. Each piece is something that’s been thought about and it’s put on because it’s in the right place as I’m doing it.”
“I do a lot of fast sculptures in two hours and I love that – I really love that – and I could do those every day.”
“There’s something about live sculpting that makes me just go mad. I love it because I go into tunnel vision. I don’t allow my sitter or myself to talk.”
“Nobody can speak to us for two hours and I go into some sort of trance – I feel like I’m in a different world, really – and I speak completely positive thoughts to myself all the way through.”
“If I say anything negative to myself, my sculpture goes wrong. It’s amazing. For years and years and years it was the only time in my life that I could actually say that I was positive for two whole hours, every thought.”
“If you could do that in the rest of your life, imagine what you could do!”
Sculpting the Queen
“Being left on your own with The Queen is just unbelievable. She was trying to make me feel all right, chatting away about all sorts of things. It was such a privilege, and I was so honoured that she would trust me.”
Frances was anxious to find out whether The Queen liked the sculpture, something made all the more difficult because protocol forbade her to ask The Queen for her opinions.
“Jack’s a salesman so he suggested I should ask her if she liked the length of her hair or wanted it shorter, then if she’d be happy for it to go to the foundry.”
“At that sitting I was doing her hair and asked if she’d like me to make her hair shorter. She did, and became very interested, and then I asked if she was happy for it to go to the foundry as it was.”
“She said ‘Yes, and don’t fiddle with it when you get back to your studio!’ and wagged her finger. So, I knew she loved it. It was fabulous.”
“It was really strange because I just knew in advance how I wanted it to look. She is so elegant, she’s my role model. Ever since, I’ve had her picture in my dressing room and where I sleep.”
“The Queen’s a very strong person to look up to and I think that strength came out in the sculpture.”
“I’ve sculpted many people since then and I’ve enjoyed it very much but there’s nobody else I think would be as out of this world as The Queen was to me.”
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