W. Stanley "Sandy" Proctor (born December 12, 1939) is an American painter and sculptor in Florida who makes bronze figures. He was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 2006.
In 2004 he received the National Sculpture Society's American Artists Professional League Award for a traditional realistic depiction in sculpture.
Biography
Proctor was born on December 12, 1939 in Tallahassee, Florida. He attended Kate Sullivan Elementary School. Proctor's fifth grade teacher was an inspiration and motivation for his art work. He attended Leon High School in Tallahassee. After graduating from High School he attended Washington and Lee University in Virginia where he earned a bachelor's degree in history and worked three years in Washington, D.C. as a political aide. Proctor then worked in his family's fuel-oil business until 1981, when he then devoted full-time to his art career.
Proctor developed a hobby as a painter while a child, which progressed to more advanced paintings as a young man. He loved the outdoors, so he painted subjects like birds, flowers, trees, landscapes and wild animals. Proctor's hobby eventually evolved into a career as people showed interest in his work. His paintings were selected for exhibition in many juried shows by a panel of peers. Among those were displays at the Leigh Yawkey Birds in Art, Southern Watercolor Society Show, and the Florida Watercolor Society Show.
Proctor transitioned his art work into sculptures of clay. Later he progressed to working in alabaster and marble. His wife's and family's support helped ease his transition into three dimensional art work. He perfected the use of a Styrofoam armature and became proficient at depicting people and their unique traits, characteristics and personalities. Proctor's work lead to making bronze sculptures portraying moments in life, which he is best known for. His works are displayed at the Smithsonian Museum, the British Museum of Natural History, and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
In 2004 Proctor's work Seychelles was selected as the American Artists Professional League Award recipient from the National Sculpture Society 71st Annual Awards Exhibition for work best depicting traditional realism.
Public sculpture
Proctor did a work for the Veteran's Memorial Park in Cupertino, California called The Guardians. One of the first sculptured memorials to those who served in the War in Afghanistan, and the only one directly pertaining to Operation Red Wings. it is a large sculpture of two Navy SEALs killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan in 2005. In November 2007, it was dedicated by Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter. The sculpture depicts Matthew Axelson and James Suh in full combat equipment. The event inspired the war movie Lone Survivor. Proctor offered his opinion to the Tallahassee Democrat that it is "my best work yet". Because of his scrupulous devotion to realistic depictions of humans, Proctor was the personal choice of Axelson's family for the project, and they made that recommendation to the committee.
His work is diverse in subject and location and critically recognized, such as his sculpture titled "Sharing Sunshine" which is located at the Denver Health Medical Center. Additional sculptures of his are also in collections at the Boyds Collection in Pennsylvania, the Colorado National Jewish Center Hospital; the Living Desert Museum in California; depiction of children playing in the Florida Governor's Mansion Children's Park, cast from a clay work; Hackensack University Medical Center and the Leon County Courthouse. He has done pieces for Bank of America, the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, the Florida Polk Museum of Art, and the Living Desert Museum in California. The Leigh Yawkey Woodson "Wildlife: The Artist's View" show and traveling exhibit of 1993 included Proctor's alabaster sculpture of the endangered manatee. A bronze manatee sculpture of his is in the atrium of the Tallahassee Memorial Hospital. Proctor's works cost from several thousand dollars for small busts or birds to a $100,000 or more for larger pieces.