ARTIST'S STATEMENT

My sculptures have evolved over many years and reflect the different materials, styles and subjects that I have used in my response to what life has brought me. It also shows my desire - need actually - to express these responses in three dimensional form.

I love wood and many of my carvings are my response to a particular piece of wood. Their textures excite me - for instance, the knarled, hard, black cracked wood of ancient stinkwood trees. I love to combine those textures of natural erosion with the marks of my chainsaw, rasp or chisel, and when areas of this close-grained hardwood is polished, there before me is the full range of its possible textures.

Then when I enclose a polished “pip” of golden yellowwood, red ivory wood, or aromatic red cedar, I create one of the series of works called “Fruit Forms” or “Pods”, which are symbols of new life, growth, and promise.

From these works evolved a more abstract idea. The “Renewal” series, which are symbols of hope. In these, the outer form is cracking open, being pushed aside, as it were, by the growth of the inner sphere, which is to me the symbol of perfection. The meaning of these can be personal, spiritual, social , political …

Wings have a special meaning - they imply to us humans the ability to rise above our daily concerns. Some of my wings are a development of the theme of the “Pod”, enclosing and protecting the form within, as shown in “Preening Bird”, “Seraph” and some of the Pods.

I have never had a tree cut down for its wood. Most of my wood came from auction sales held by the Forestry Department in Knysna, Cape, South Africa, in their work of preservation of the indigenous forest.

Having taught sculpture in Cape Town for 20 years, the basis of my teaching being the nude form, a traditional method, I became interested in the expression of emotion shown in the figure as a whole. This has led to a new series of small bronzes of figures in movement.

Maureen Langley