Alan Cottrill Sculptor

Alan Cottrill was born in 1952 and raised in the Appalachian region of Ohio.  His father was a milkman and mother a homemaker.  Alan was the first in his family to graduate high school.  After a stint in college, the army, and truck driving Alan founded a successful fast food chain and soon became an international entrepreneur.  He was invited by the US Department of Commerce to participate in various trade missions throughout the world.  Through these travels, Alan was able to visit the world’s major art museums and galleries.  In addition Alan became an avid art collector and painted in his spare time.

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In 1990 Alan touched clay for the first time and declared “this is the mistress I’ve traveled the world in search of.”  He sold his business interests and dedicated himself full-time to becoming one of the finest figurative sculptors in the world.  Toward that end, Alan moved to New York City and studied night and day at the renowned Art Students League and the National Academy of Design.  He also studied Human Anatomy at Columbia Medical Center.  During his studies Alan took numerous trips to Europe to study the world’s greatest sculptures in person.

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Lifelong friend Charles Leasure and Alan founded in 1996 the bronze casting foundry Coopermill Bronzeworks in Zanesville, Ohio.  To date they have cast well over 500 of Alan’s statues into bronze as well as hundreds of other sculptor’s work.

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Alan approaches his art with the same determination and passion that led to his successes in business- sculpting seven days a week with a whirlwind energy that is unequalled.  Intense, ambitious, and goal driven, Alan has arguably the largest body of work of bronze statues by any living sculptor with commissioned monuments throughout the United States.  Alan’s work has been described as being powerful, virile, and full of life, energy, and complexity.

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Alan maintains a studio/gallery in Zanesville, Ohio that is visited by thousands of tourists a year.