Gabriel Akre

Courtesy of the artist and ARC.

First Place Sculpture/First Place Fully From Life in the 17th International ARC Salon® online exhibition;

17th & 18th International ARC Salon® Exhibition at Sotheby's New York, July 17-27, 2026.

Art Renewal Center, International Realism: 17th & 18th International ARC Salons (Woodbridge, UK: ACC Art Books Ltd, 2026), pp. 135, 221, illustrated.

"This piece depicts a woman in repose. It is a classically inspired pose rendered in a naturalistic manner. The work aims simply to represent the elegant beauty of the human form, offering a purified vision of the body.

In Christian theology, sometimes ‘woman’ is referred to using the symbol of a garden, referencing the feminine genius of nurturing, fertility, and life-giving love. The sculpture could be seen as an allegory for a garden as a general concept, but I sometimes see it as a specific allegory for the Garden of Eden. Implicit in this piece is also the complimentary quality of the masculine genius; as ‘woman’ is called ‘the garden’, 'man' is called ‘the guardian of the garden’. 

These thoughts are primarily derived from a text called the Theology of the Body by Pope Saint John Paul II.” – Gabriel Akre