The Bone People

This group of small carvings are worked from the dead branches of a Mexican Orange tree. The wood is delightful, soft and pale but very sound. I think of the scrimshaw carvings eskimos and sailors of old would make on bones and tusks. I shall carve more before exhibiting them. I like that, after the initial chiselling in the studio, I can work them with a hand knife on my lap in the evenings, with the telly on. I also am quite excited by the suggestive shapes already there. The standing chap with the outstretched fist I realise now, is exactly like a laying figure in the bottom left corner of Guernica.