Blog
Emotional Stone
This is a drawing from around 1615 showing a stick wielding Inka encouraging the workers to pull harder on their ropes to move the great boulder of stone. I was reminded of it when thinking about Erratic Stones. The stone is called a Sayk’uska, which means weary or tired in Quechua, and refers to […]
Erratic Stones
And stones moved silently across the world hurled into an empty ship’s weightless hold folded into a glacier’s freezing mound quick-pocketed by tourists and children with an eye for things shiny and round. This is a poem by Alyson Hallett, from The Stone Library – and an extract below, where she is explaining how […]
Fine carving is …..
“…fine carving is when one feels that not only the figure but the stone, through the medium of the figure, has come to life.” — Adrian Stokes
Calm after the storm
We seem to have got away with it quite lightly here – though the tin roofs of the workshop were well rattled! Happily they stayed in place. Today by comparison is beautiful and I’m working outside on a piece I started some months ago – commissions, orders and my exhibition meant I had to […]
Can I sculpt the sky?
Sometimes all the conditions contrive to make the start to the day feel incredibly good. This is one such morning – frost, mist, and cloud burst through with a gold and copper sun. It made me stand still and look – feeling awe. This is the view from my workshop, if I take a […]
A Water Vole called Plop
My Water Vole sculpture was inspired by encouraging news from a number of Water Voles re-introduction programmes, where there is evidence of thriving colonies, and some waterways where this elusive mammal has gained a stronghold. Regular monitoring of these also suggests that the species remains vulnerable to further decline and extinctions. Long-term habitat loss, […]
The Serpentine Gallery
Whenever I think of the Serpentine Gallery – I think of the beautiful colours and patterning found in Serpentine stone, and the texture of it polished and the feel of it as it is carved. A gallery full of carved Serpentine sculpture. But actually the gallery is what used to be a Tea Room […]
Cut flowers for the house
Cut Cardoon to be accurate, and these flower heads never seemed to actually flower. Maybe this variety is not supposed to, but I had waited and waited for tufts of colour or thistle type petals to emerge, but they never did. Cutting was a tough job even for my secateurs! However, what beautiful heads […]
Guidance for Mentoring Artists
I’ve just been on the most amazing day course – it was organised through Ryedale Artworks – my local arts group, to offer training for members who felt they might be able to offer mentoring to other members. RAW had identified areas where members were looking to learn new skills, needed help, or wished […]
Two for Joy
Recently, in exploring ideas about collecting, and whether this was a natural instinct in us – I thought about the Magpie and its reputation for collecting – or stealing – bright objects. Indeed, all of nature and all the animals for whom collecting is essential to survival. It is often seen in caches […]