WOOD SCULPTURE
Wood is sourced mostly from Cornish gardens, some recycled foreign woods are used for their durability.
Turning in to reveal the dark heartwood in a bowl made from the whole diameter, lighter sap outside, hollowed within. Now put to dry for months, then sanding as many grades as needed, add Danish oil for food safe protective finish.
A bowl form seems best to represent trees integrity, thin or thick, graceful, or robust as a tree may be, practical for fruit or salad or as wild and random for the beauty.
Local trees from Cornwall tell universal stories of life in their grainy brown like old photos, from before you were born.
Saw chisel and plane and lots of sanding refine the form. Yew elm larch apple cherry and ginkgo all have their different texture and colours to show.
These works offer a point of view of nature, that trees share our vertical landscape.
Trees have radial form reaching out and upwards, the way of all life.
Trees as companions since the stick and stone age.
Silence reveals
cracks in our hearts
love makes us
open to life
And the tree
In Heaven’s view
Is coming out of the blue
-As much by seed from earth
that gave it birth
From the Greek, pur (fire) and graphos (writing), pyrography is the act of “writing with fire”. This ancient elemental art form has been practised worldwide since before the dawn of recorded history. From these prehistoric designs created using the charred remains of fires, decorating wood or other materials with burn marks has evolved and grown to be the art form it is today. Each piece of wood is a precious and unique gift from nature. The artist must connect with their material. Some wood is soft and requires lower burning temperatures, some wood is harder and requires higher temperatures. Each piece is cared for individually. After all, the trees and mother nature care for us, giving us oxygen, without which we could not live. The wood from the trees comes to us, and to me, the artist with her hot wire pen. It comes, shaped and smoothed from the sea, or fresh and fragrant from a friend’s garden.
What could be a better canvas than life itself?
Natural Wood for pyrographers and artists
Wood for me is intrinsically interesting, its colour and texture, the story of its growth written in the grain, and in the sheer variety of uk timbers
I like to cut a few slices from every log I find and have amassed a fair number.
These come in various sizes, regular or wild in shape and texture.
If really all you want is plywood, I don’t supply it.
Painters may need a sealed surface, or seal it themselves, or accept a ready sealed piece, done to protect the wood in storage
More Than Plywood, Slices of Interest for Pyroarts
Pyrography on the other hand needs a well sanded sanded but untreated surface
Perhaps any artist needs encouragement to step outside the basic frame and begin on the door or wall, to accept other than square edged fresh white.
Wood for those that love it is already a medium with style, delicate tone and the raw of nature. The medium is already part of the story
Impossible to list 1000 pieces, in various woods, mostly rectangular, some round slices of a branch, some natural edged, yet here are some clues.
Ranging in size from 10cms to a metre or more in length and 5 to 40cms wide. Bigger by request, 15-20mm thick
Smaller pieces are usually thinner, say 5 or 6mm, larger may be 8 or 10mm, to save sanding my fingernails
These are not offcuts, they are large or small logs sliced up in the length, like bread cut lengthways.
Sometimes two adjacent slices are paired and hinged as an opening card, like a birthday card, using thin elastic cord in predrilled holes.
Perhaps one, or two long edges of any sized piece are left natural, ie side is not cut off straight but up to the surface of the log
A piece with one long straight edge as the base may suggest a Landscape drawing. Grain is often suggestive of seascape or land and sky.
If both long edges are natural then perhaps it will stand as a Portrait design.
Better pyro machines and blowtorches allow the pyrar to handle bigger pieces faster, and are less dependent on perfect surfaces. Some of my clients embellish pyro art with colour pencil or acrylic paint
Wood grain, hmm what to say, somewhere between wild to bland, light to dark, flat to warped,
Some woods twist spectacularly in drying, others hardly at all. They are stable when dry
Beginners like sycamore or birch and some folk don’t want darker woods since burns don’t stand out so well.
Some woods burn crisply: sycamore, holly, birch, lime, cherry, most fruitwoods,
while some are not so easy for a beginner but have the reward of wild grain or beautiful colour like yew or mulberry.
If your designs cover the whole wood, then plywood is good, ply birch, maple, and poplar are available untreated. If really all you want is plywood, I don’t supply it
If you want a unique tree piece, and are ready enough to let the grain be the inspiration, then try a few unique pieces or a mixed box .
Supply details to consider
Individual pieces range from £3, £5, £7, £10, and £15, £20, £25 for a plank
Mixed boxes can be requested as mostly small or mostly medium or mostly large,
12, 8, or 5 pieces, up to 28 x 16 cms
£25 a box +p&p, around £4
and Natural or Straight Edged or a mix,
and Wild grain or Bland or somewhere between.
Then consider lightness of tone, richness of grain, and colour
These will be supplied from stock, within range.
If you have exact specifications, I will do my best to fulfil , but may take longer to find/cut and sand.
I have 1000 pieces ready to sell, another similar amount drying in my shed, so prefer elastic spec surplies
They will be fully sanded at least one surface, often two. Reverse is smooth.
Pairs of pieces for Opening cards are sanded all surfaces, so you can pyro front and back covers, and the inside pair of facing mirrored pages
There are also Panorama landscape cards with a split front, opening to left and right to reveal a full width inner 15’’ wide
There are always odd natural shapes, from twists or bends with one smooth sanded surface to pyro and a flat standing base