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Sculptor Toby Bell's deep-rooted understanding of the human form, which often features in his large-scale works, makes perfect sense when you know about his other life.
Bell, whose latest work The Cosmic Blacksmith will feature at Sculpture By the Sea at Cottesloe from this weekend, divides his time between the worlds of art and medicine.
Not only a talented sculptor, Bell is also a surgeon who specialises in skin conditions, and after years of trying, is finally finding a happy balance between the two.
"My brain is split between art and science. I like the engineering aspect of sculpture, and construction planning. It is hard work with dust and noise," Bell said.
"But I find that a lot of the art spills over into the medicine and vice-versa."
Bell was a creative and artistic child, but his parents did not believe a career in the arts was appropriate for their bright young son.
The son of Scottish doctor and a Russian dancer and painter, his childhood was not an easy one.
"My upbringing was chaotic ... my father was an alcoholic and my mother was addicted to opioids, so my mum was never really awake and my dad was never around except when he was drunk," he said.
"There was this impossible pressure building up over the years, of passion, emotion, and art being held back by this feeling of needing to be shut down.
"I saw most of my siblings crumble in front of me and I decided that I wouldn't be like that."
Epiphany during arts festival
He ended up studying medicine, but as the years went by, art never loosened its grip on him.
"I spent a long time trying to reconcile something inside me that really needed to get out, and that had been held back," he said.
"When it did come it came like an avalanche.
"I suddenly embraced all these different feelings, emotions and ways of expressing things that I didn't know existed before."
Bell's epiphany came during an arts festival he attended in the US.
By this time he was a successful skin specialist, but he could not shake the feeling that he needed to express himself through art.
"People were living life with passion," he said.
"It was like the floodgates opened and suddenly I knew from that moment I had to embrace my artistic self and honour that. I've never looked back."
Sculpture explores transformation
Sculpture was the medium he chose to pursue his artistic expression, and his work often explores the tension between art and science.
Bell described The Cosmic Blacksmith as an optimistic piece about his struggles and the process of transformation.
The 700-kilogram brass and jarrah sculpture is a collaborative piece with ties to both Australia and Germany, where the casting for the sculpture was done.
"It is [about] that point of impossible pressure that seems totally unsustainable but you know you're at that point of transition," he said.
"You have this choice at those moments of acceptance, or resistance or destruction or rebirth. You know that if you trust then magic things can happen — even if, at the time, all you can see is chaos.
"It is a female figure but it represents humanity.
"I hope that when people see it that it resonates with their lives ... I want it to touch people in that way so that they have a sense of familiarity — it is a universal experience."
Sculpture by the Sea opens on Friday and runs until March 20.
Topics: sculpture, doctors-and-medical-professionals, cottesloe-6011