For the last 45 years, Sandy Proctor, who “gave up the fuel oil business” to turn a hobby into a full-time job has built an internationally-praised career as the painter and sculptor he’d always wanted to be.
At the ripe age of 40, Tallahassee-born Sandy Proctor had left the family fuel business for a try at the art world. Beginning by hand-carrying his paintings from gallery to gallery in New York City, Proctor and his wife virtually “stepped off the edge” to see if he could make it as an artist.
And almost at once, the galleries knew what was brought through the door were pieces that would sell.
Over time, Proctor expanded his artistic sights with monumental sculptural work in bronze and stone.
Though self-taught, he was recognized as a master of the human figure in action. With particular genius capturing expression and emotion in the unforgiving metal, Proctor’s work made him an internationally sought after sculptor of both indoor and outdoor life-size pieces.
Proctor, whose bronze and alabaster sculptures grace the galleries of the Smithsonian, the British Museum of Natural History, the White House, as well as university campuses, public sculpture gardens, and dozens of private collections, is 85 this year.