The delicate nature studies by noted sculptors Richard Bell Smith and Blanca Borja de Smith are sure to strike a responsive chord among those who feel a special affinity for woodland, field, and stream. With unfailing mastery, this husband and wife team capture the dynamic spontaneity, rhythm, and textures of natural growth. Here the transcendental experience of being at one with nature is preserved in bronze and copper for your lasting enjoyment and contemplation.Richard went directly from school back to the studio where his artistic sensibilities found their expression in a new medium- welded sculpture. He finds that working directly with molten metal is an ideal way to capture the flow of organic forms. His sculptures tend toward the interpretive and subjective end of the impressionist/photographic realist spectrum. For example, he strives to capture and communicate the essence of a tree as he experiences it rather than to merely reproduce a “photographic” copy of the original. The result is a tree sculpture that unmistakably evokes “aspen,” while a close scrutiny reveals that the leaves are not a literal copy of aspen leaves. Art imitates life, Richard agrees, but artistic expression must first pass through the interpretive filter of the artist. Art is an act of creation and communication. If too much is “filtered out,” the resulting work of art is obscure, and is relevant only to the artist and a small group of those who share his vision (or art entrepreneurs, who market his “product” as “avante guarde” to investors and pseudo-sophisticates!) An artist-communicator gains a following to the degree that his art resonates with the sensibilities of the viewer, and Bell's retinue of collectors and admirers is vast.Bell has contributed many important innovations in technique and materials to his medium, elevating it to the point where he is able to express the finest nuance of color, texture, and form. He eschews any means of reproduction in his work. Each piece is an original welded sculpture, fashioned only with an oxyacetylene torch, a pair of pliers- and his boundless imagination. Now in his “golden” years, Bell is renowned for his unrivaled skill with the welding torch. He has won numerous awards and competitions, exhibited in countless shows, and his sculptures are found in many of the world's finest collections.