Dame Elisabeth Frink (1930–1993) - British Artist 

Frink a Portrait, Bloomsbury, Edward Lucie-Smith and Elisabeth Frink, Ch. lll, page 43

“For Frink, the end product was never a purely formal statement. It was a poetic image, an embodiment of complex thoughts and feelings within herself. One important reason working so often in series was that she frequently found it impossible to resolve these thoughts and feelings within the compass of single pieces of sculpture.”

Dame Elisabeth Frink (14 November 1930 – 18 April 1993) was an English sculptor and printmaker. Her Times obituary noted the three essential themes in her work as "the nature of Man; the 'horseness' of horses; and the divine in human form".

Sculptor and printmaker born in Thurlow, Suffolk. She studied at Guildford School of Art and Chelsea School of Art and first captured the public's attention in 1951 at an exhibition at the Beaux Arts Gallery, London. Since then exhibited regularly and was for twenty-seven years associated with the Waddington Gallery in London and Toronto, Canada. Her main subjects were man, dog and horse. The appeal of her work lies in its directness, the expurgation of all artiness in a frank statement of feeling. Often the anatomy is exaggerated or incorrect, the life-likeness grows more out of her interest in the spirit of the subject: the urgency animating Running Man, the alertness in Barking Dog. During the Algerian war, she began making large heads, blinded by goggles which have a threatening facelessness.

Her numerous public commissions include Wild Boar for Harlow New Town, Blind Beggar and Dog for Bethnal Green, a lectern for Coventry Cathedral, Shepherd for Paternoster Square beside St. Paul's Cathedral and a Walking Madonna for Salisbury Cathedral. In 1982, she was for her services to art, created DBE. A 1985 retrospective was given to her at the RA of which she was an elected member. As an exhibitor, she showed at all major UK venues including the RSA, SSWA, WIAC, RGI, Grosvenor Gallery, Compass Gallery, Glasgow, Marjorie Parr Gallery and at the New Grafton Gallery, Barnes and at venues around the world. Her work is represented in the Tate Gallery, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Jerwood Sculpture Park, Lancaster University Art Gallery, Liverpool University Art Collection, Metropole Art Collection, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Museums Sheffield, New Hall College, Cambridge, Stirling University Art Collection, University of Warwick Art Collection, Yorkshire Sculpture Park and in public collections worldwide.

Many of her drawings from the 1960's appeared as prints executed by the Curwen Press. Elisabeth Frink was diagnosed with cancer in her early sixties. Despite this, she was working on a colossal statue, 'Risen Christ', for Liverpool Cathedral. This sculpture would prove to be her last as just one week after its installation she died aged 62. Frink was the mother of the painter Lin Jammet and her estate is handled by and exhibited at Beaux Arts Bath and Beaux Arts London.

Source: www.artbiogs.co.uk