Artist Statement

“I didn’t start out to be a sculptor, although, by spending my childhood playing on the clayey beaches of the Minas Basin, maybe I did without knowing it, but after many hours of sketching in French museums over several years I realized that my sketchbooks were filled with drawings of sculptures and that I was always attracted to their dancelike, gestural qualities. A visit to the collection of Henry Moore plaster casts in the Art Gallery of Ontario during a stopover on a trip home clinched it for me: I had to try this for myself. I signed up for a few lessons with a potter and have never looked back. My sculptures up to now have mainly been portraits, the theme I know best, but I still set up a structure of inner movement to bring out the personalities of my sitters.”

Elizabeth makes sculptures in both English and French and accepts commissions.

Biography

Originally from the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia, Elizabeth Sircom received her art training in Paris, France, with painter Lionel Verrrier, and at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, and lived in Le Havre, Normandy for 20 years, working as a professional artist and art teacher (drawing, painting and clay sculpture). Her interest in portraiture led to involvement in several community art projects on a portrait theme. She returned with her family to live in Nova Scotia in 2013 and since then has been an active member of Visual Arts Nova Scotia, CARFAC and the Nova Scotia Potters’ Guild, giving many workshops to adults and children through PAINTS and ArtsSmarts, at the Acadia University Art Gallery in Wolfville, and at Ross Creek Centre for the Arts. She has exhibited at the Corridor Gallery, the Charles MacDonald Concrete House in Centreville, the Cedar Centre in Windsor, and in Charlottetown in 2017, where she exhibited a series of historical busts on a Confederation theme. She exhibited at ArtCan Gallery in 2021 and at the Ice House Gallery in Tatamagouche in 2022, in the portrait-themed show "Face Value".