NEWA

This is a wonderful exhibition - National Exhibition of Wildlife Art - and I was very pleased to have a piece selected for the show.

In the small beck which runs through my workshop yard, I have families of voles and the banks are pitted with their burrows.  I had seen one scurrying, but on closer inspection it turned out to be a water shrew.  I was captivated and watched it scrabble around under water with its nose rootling the sediment.  They move so fast it is difficult to keep up.  I did sketches at the time and decided to carve a shrew in a lovely piece of Cornish Soapstone - Polyphant which I had in the workshop.

This stone is a soft metamorphic rock and is easily worked with hand tools and carves well.  It has beautiful colouring which is brought to life when polished

So my Soapstone Shrew was accepted for the exhibition, and currently sits alongside lions, leapards, lapwings and a myriad of other wildlife - that is in paintings, prints and sculpture.  

Another sculptor at the exhibition who also works in a Cornish stone is Lawrence Murley who carves exquisite lizards and frogs in Serpentine.  The exhibition is well worth a trip for these alone - Gordale Nursery and Garden Centre, Burton, Wirral.