Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/769056
86 • S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S "Michelangelo worked in cadavers. I got employed at a slaughterhouse. They'd pay us sixty cents each, and we'd do thirty animals an hour. I would take the bones out of forty thousand to fifty thousand sheep or kangaroos a year." Echoing the maxim that it takes 10,000 hours of practice before a skillset is mastered, Doellinger's hands-on grunt work imprinted a keen understanding of animal physiology and musculature that lies beneath the outer carriage of large quadrupeds. He completed hundreds of thousands of dissections that laid the foundation for his work in taxidermy. In the years after the start of the new millennium, he returned to the U.S. and lived in Texas, where he completed big game mounts for an assortment of clients who praised him for his command of animal gesture. "My philosophy is to sculpt from the inside out," he says. "What you express on the surface is a product of how much you know about what lies beneath, the mechanics that create locomotion." D oellinger was commissioned to create a monument-sized bronze of a leaping whitetail for a shopping mall, and his reputation quickly spread by of taxidermists, which whetted his interest in bringing three dimensions to creatures he had grown up sketching in Australia. "When I was in my teen years, having a career as a fine artist didn't seem to be in the realm of possibility. I just wanted to be a cowboy in the Outback," he says, noting that wranglers in Australia are known as "ringers" and Doellinger loved being in the saddle. From there, he took a job as a meat shooter for pet food companies in the sparsely populated Northern Territory, domain of the fictional Crocodile Dundee. The Kimberly Coast is home to the longest tropical wilderness coastline in the world. "It's an environment where you have to have your wits," he says. The territory is made up of many large ranches millions of acres in size. It was a time in which the government implemented a massive depopulation program to eradicate brucellosis and tuberculosis in cattle. While exploring the Outback he harvested Asiatic buffalo and feral cattle. Later he found work in meatpacking plants, boning out sheep, cows, and kangaroos in facilities where he was paid per animal, not by the hour. cotta celebrations of aboriginal people. He was introduced to Ricketts at age 11. "He showed me some things, gave me a block of clay which I fashioned into a composition, and then he fired it for me. To have affirmation so young and from someone like him was hugely reinforcing," he says. Shining through Doellinger's portfolio, reflecting the ethic taught to him by Ricketts, is a deep sense of relatedness and empathy for his subjects. "I don't know if everyone is the same growing up, but as a child I would pretend to be animals crawling on all fours across the ground," Doellinger says. "In my head now, I do the same thing to understand its personality, lightness, and speed of movement, be it a dog, bear, elephant, or lion. I want their gestures to say something; I want them to have impact and weight." At 15, Doellinger started competing in rodeos and tasted some success in rough stock events. Seven years later, in 1979, he made his first trip to the U.S., spending time in the Central Valley of California partaking in steer wrestling. "Fortunately I didn't get beat up too bad," he says. On the side, he fell into the company Mick doellinger adds the final touches to his clay sculpture of an American bison at his studio in Fort Worth, texas. "in every species, i've tried to feel where its life force comes from," says the artist. Previous pages: Agitated – Cape Buffalo, an edition of 25.