Hélène VI

Hélène VI
1979
Kohe-kohe
15 x 10 x 10 cm

This sculpture belongs to a series of works depicting Moody’s wife Hélène, created across several years. Moody revisited the subject repeatedly, exploring variations in form, expression, and material. The use of synthetic materials such as resin reflects the experimental direction of his late work.

The Hélène series demonstrates Moody’s interest in serial exploration, where a single subject becomes the basis for multiple sculptural interpretations.

This head of Hélène was carved shortly after her sudden death in 1978. In choosing to use Kohe-Kohe, a wood of unyielding hardness, it is thought the artist wanted to make his task as arduous as possible; in keeping with his anguish. One has the impression that each painful gouge in the wood represents a step toward regaining the Hélène of his early portrait in oak, undertaken at the time of their marriage.

Despite the different techniques and disparity in size, the two works are virtually identical in conception and form; yet the prospect that each evokes is entirely different: on the one hand, the future is there for the taking: on the other, it holds nothing but desolation.

By the time Moody has finished this portrait his health was failing, and he was in what was later described as “a state of inner bankruptcy” as far as his work was concerned.

Stewart Brown (1951), whose poem See Feeling had been inspired by Moody’s work The Wheel Within (1972) wrote to Moody “I really feel that there was an especial power about the new head of Hélène – it is important that you keep on working. It is I suppose the responsibility of such a gift”