Richard Mteki
Click for more With impressive creativity and clarity, Richard Mteki produces his sculptures with vigor. To watch him at work is always an experience. Mteki sees a boulder, walks around it once, and most often has completed the sculpture in his mind's eye. Once the sculpting begins, he rarely interrupts his work until it is finished. No drawings on the stone or models are made in preparation, no getting up from the boulder and stepping back to ensure that the proportions are right.
Mteki's sculptures are generally peaceful, they do not disturb but rather leave the viewer feeling calm and content. His work is filled with a gentle spiritual presence. Usually small and compact their message is much larger than their scale. He is much influenced by the natural shape of the raw stone, rarely disturbing the original form to any significant extent. His approach invariably is to work deeply into the surface of the stone to create the features of his human, animal or metamorphic subjects. His preferred medium is the rich, natural earth color of brown serpentine.
