Sculpture
Taste the Rain
I love walks on Christmas Day, fresh air after the excesses and excitements. I went for a walk on Boxing Day, and today too, despite the wind and rain. Today’s walk took me through Hagg Wood, a bank of trees snaking above the stream that runs through Lastingham village. Once amongst the bare tree […]
Weasel Sculpture
Wildlife is a constant inspiration for my sculpture – infused with the feeling of weasel after watching one bounding and zig-zagging in the field by my workshop, I wanted to carve one. I chose my favourite Yorkstone to carve the weasel, mainly because it is a stone I know well and all my energy […]
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 […]
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 […]
Scraping my name from the wall
On Monday I took down my exhibition The Museum as Muse – it happened much more quickly than the time taken to set up! Soon I was trundling back to the workshop with my sculpture. It felt rather sad in a way, the vinyl lettering spelling my name and announcing the exhibition, scraped […]