Sculptures of Keren Gilfoyle - McGroarty
Keren considers herself one of the 'veterans' of the hobby. Although she
first entered the hobby in 1970, she was sculpting hoses long before that! In fact, she does not remember when she first began sculpting. Certainly horses
shaped from pasticene were one of her earliest play things.
From the
age of 10 she moved on to using various air-drying clays, but even though she
was creating (and selling) horses made from these materials from her early
teens, she still wasn't satisfied. Discovering (and then owning) Pamela du
Boulay's exquisite Rydal Arabs fired her with an ambition to create her own
sculptures of equal beauty and anatomical detail. Attempts to launch her
own equivalent of the Rydal's in the 1970's failed through lack of access to
anyone with mold-making expertise.
Discovering
Breyers and developing techniques to customize them in 1976 diverted Keren
temporarily from creating her own line of original sculptures, but in 1986 she
had the chance to put out a piece in resin in the USA. This Arab stallion
was one of the first hobbyist resins and proved influential. It also led
Keren to a commission to sculpt new pieces for the Steven's Hartland
Collectibles tenite range. Alas, before the first of her contract masters
were delivered, Stevens suffered the disastrous flood that put them our of the
mass-produced model horse business.
Health
problems from 1990 onwards prevent Keren from doing much in the way of custom or
original work, but in 1997 Daphne Macpherson of Cascade Models issued one of Keren's
pieces originally intended for Hartland: the Clydesdale Colt 'FLOWER OF
LANARK'
Since then,
Keren has been working on a number of new pieces. The Desert Artisans was debuting the first of these, a stablemate scale Arabian stallion inspired by her
real Padron grandson, Roupert.
| - Name - | - Year - | - Run - | - Price - | - status - | - picture - |
| Flower of Lanark | 1997 | 50 | £70 100$ |
disc |  |
| Malik en Naseem | 1999 | 15 | £35 | disc |  |
