Sculptor · Asheville, North Carolina
Lydia Bacon
Portraits, figures, and horses in clay and bronze, made from life and from a lifetime around the animals.
Selected Work
Sculpture in bronze, resin, and clay, with works on paper and canvas. Click any piece to see more views.
About
Lydia Bacon is an eighteen-year-old sculptor from Asheville, North Carolina. She works in clay and bronze, and her subjects are the portrait, the figure, and the horse.
She lives on a horse farm outside Asheville and has spent most of her life around horses. They were her first subject and remain her most frequent one. She knows their anatomy the way a rider does, from the ground and from the saddle, and that knowledge carries into the work: the weight on a hind leg, the set of an ear, the way a mule stands when it is bored.
Lydia trained in figurative sculpture at the Florence Academy of Art, completing a four-week intensive in the figure, in oil-based clay, alongside adult and professional artists. In the United States she has studied in week-long workshops at the Scottsdale Artists' School and Brookgreen Gardens with sculptors Alicia Ponzio, Bryan Rapp, Stephanie Revennaugh, Sandy Scott, Rod Zullo, and Eugene Daub, and with painters Chauncey Homer and Oliver Sin.
Her first commission came as a high school freshman: a bronze of Jewels Goldstrike, the Olympic mount of dressage rider Julio Mendoza. Her resin trophies for the North American Saddle Mule and Donkey Association have been presented at its national show for five years.
She is a member of the National Sculpture Society. Outside the studio she rides dressage, holds United States Pony Club certifications through C1, and trained a rescue horse herself to compete in combined driving.
Training
- Florence Academy of Art, Florence, ItalyFour-week figurative sculpture intensive, oil-based clay. Instructors Mitch Shea, Eirik Arnesen, Chase Heinke, Anna-Lena Cäcilia Ledl, and Thor Larsen.
- Scottsdale Artists' School and Brookgreen GardensWeek-long workshops throughout high school: portrait and clothed figure (Alicia Ponzio), portrait (Bryan Rapp), sculpting the horse (Stephanie Revennaugh), bird sculpture (Sandy Scott), bas relief (Rod Zullo, Eugene Daub), equine oil painting (Chauncey Homer), charcoal drawing (Oliver Sin).
Commissions
- Jewels Goldstrike, bronzeFor Olympic dressage rider Julio Mendoza
- National show trophies, resinNorth American Saddle Mule and Donkey Association, three designs, presented at the national show for five years
- Vanessa, life-size portraitCurrently being cast in bronze
Affiliations
- National Sculpture SocietyMember
Equestrian
- Dressage rider
- United States Pony Club D1, D2, D3, and C1Horse management and dressage
- Combined driving, training levelSelf-trained a rescue horse to competition
Get in touch
For commissions, available work or studio visits, send a note. New work is posted on Instagram first.