Sculpture
Fog and Fox
Still blanketed in fog here, as earlier in the week – but today feels so different. I’ve shut out the damp, cloudy feeling and I’m getting close and personal with a fox. I’m thinking of Jim Crumley and his book Encounters in the Wild – Fox as he writes so exceptionally about meeting […]
Fog and Fish
A foggy start this morning, making everything seem heavy and cold. I know it will clear soon enough, as there’s a warmer, brighter beaming of the background sun, which will shine and clarify. Sometimes carving feels like this, a shrugging off required of all superfluous stone, which weighs the shape down, a dense enclosure. […]
In the Workshop today – a Stare of Owls
The collective name most often used for owls is a Parliament – but I discovered there are many others, less well known, like Stare, what about Hooting, or Looming. They seem to make more sense to me. A Stooping, or Diss are suitably descriptive as well, or there’s a Wisdom of Owls. Anyway I’m […]
Bird Sculpture Book
In fact it is a monograph on sculptor Geoffrey Dashwood which I’m reading at the moment. It is a magnificent and illuminating book. The sculptor himself has written sections which for me, makes it doubly inspiring. It is a book of brilliance and filled with exceptional sculpture, it heaps such a surge of beauty […]
As a postscript to stuff Siberian
It still blows in – but now I’ve forgotten about the cold. Thoughts are sculpture. There are contemporary sculptors from Siberia, as well as the ancient Scythian ones. I’ve discovered Dashi Namdakov – and I’m enchanted – mesmerised. His words ‘We shall not run away from our roots, from the forces of […]
The Siberian blast
I’m feeling it here. The snow is light and dry, easily blown up by the wind to sting my face. As the next white blizzard streaks past my workshop door, I’m getting a glimpse of what it is like for Siberian sculptors! It brings to mind treasure buried in the Siberian permafrost and […]
Snowy stoat
Many layered this morning as the forecast was for really cold, glad too, as it was blizzarding at the workshop, and into the workshop! Snow gets in through the smallest gaps and holes, and seems to go round corners to find its way in and I can’t clear surfaces quickly enough. The downfalls are, […]
Working on Bird likenesses
Watching birds gives me such pleasure and getting to recognise their calls and markings is an ongoing joy, as is getting to know their nature, typical behaviour and characteristics after identifying them. When coming to work on a sculpture of a particular bird, knowing its nature and ‘spirit’ – or rather being able to […]
Some they fly, and some they swim
After the birds, a fish family.
Zebra Rock Birds
It isn’t often that I have red dust around, but I’ve been working on the Zebra Stone, making a couple of birds. The colouring and patterns are so unusual in this rock that I wanted to get the markings in the right places for the bird shapes – the splodges of red certainly influence […]