Artist creates stunning waxworks so realistic they're treated like real people

Madame Tussauds take note: Artist creates stunning waxworks so realistic they're treated like real people

By CHRIS PARSONS

Last updated at 6:58 PM on 8th September 2011

It's an art form with little margin for error - just ask any celebrity made to stand next to their own waxwork which barely has a passing resemblance.

But when artists get waxworks right, the results can be so stunning it's near impossible to tell them from real people.

The models created by Carole Feuerman are the latter, as they're so realistic that people sometimes think they're alive.

Is she real? Artist Carole Feuerman takes six painstaking months to create the stunningly lifelike sculptures

Carole, 50, spends a gruelling six months on the waxworks, with her hyper-realistic sculptures selling for as much as £250,000 each.

The Manhattan-based sculptor's collection includes several female model waxworks in swimming costumes or bikinis.

The grandmother-of-two said her waxworks are seen as so lifelike that viewers of her work often refer to the models as real people.

She said: 'My studio can take people by surprise, it is always littered with different body parts.
'As my work is designed to look as realistic as possible, people often get a bit freaked out when they come in.

Larger than life: Part of the time consuming nature of creating the models is down to their large size

'When I am creating and painting a sculpture people refer to the work as 'it'. 

'But when the piece is finished, people subconsciously start calling them 'him' or 'her' - they speak about my art as if they were real people.

'Even with people who have worked with me for years, and are used to my art, end up doing it.

'When designing a piece, I rarely base a sculpture purely on one person - most of my work will use the face of one model, the body of another and the arms and hands of a third.

Squint and she's real: Carole's lifelike models sell for up to £250,000 each

'I have sculptures that have been made up of body parts of five or six different people.'

Carole creates the amazing works by creating a mould, and making a resin cast out of liquid polyester, before using very fine sandpaper to refine the piece and to give the sculpture its lifelike skin.

She then spends weeks spraying hundreds of layers of skin-toned paint to the piece, attaching real human hair to finally bring it to life.

Sleeping beauty: Carole uses hundreds of layers of skin-toned paint and real hair to create the hyper-realistic models

'It is very time consuming but you can't rush it - the longer it takes, the better it looks.

'As we know the look of human skin so well it takes time to be able to get the sculpture realistic enough to trick the eye.

'But the aim of my art is not just to make a realistic looking model - I am not trying to do what Madame Tussauds do and simply recreate life-like representation.

'My art tells a story and I want the viewer to be involved and really feel the character's emotion.'