Old Man of Stoer

Many years ago I spent a few days wandering the streets of Paris, staying in the world`s smallest room at the top of the narrowest hotel on the Left Bank, sketch book in hand.
I wandered into La musée national des arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie and was smitten at the sheer strangeness of what I saw. I was particularly taken by this figure: a man standing very straight, passive or trance like, and on his head an enormous bird with wings like a flapping glider. 



I made a sketch, and decided to work on a similar figure when back in Edinburgh.


My figure is made from an elm trunk I salvaged from East Lothian and the bird, originally a sycamore trunk, was laboriously carved out by hand (no power tools for me in those days), with adze and chisel. Perhaps fashioned in the manner of a dug out canoe


And why "The Old Man of Stoer ?" I hear you ask. 
For a few years we very nearly had a tradition of spending midsummer at Achmelvich in Sutherland.


We walked to a 200 ft high sea stack of Torridonian sandstone The place alive with bonxies, twite, dunlin, guillemots, razorbills and fulmars. 


The Old Man of Stoer. 
And the combination of ancient vertical sea stack and screeching swooping birds seemed to chime well with the piece I`d made.









Comments

Popular Posts