The Serpents Tongue
Pigeon Plum
37 1/2"
The Will of the Wood
Schooled and highly skilled artist that he is, Antonius Roberts, could hardly be classified as
an intuitive artist, but in the forays into wood sculpture it has been his intuition, more than anything,
that has guided and shaped his work.
The medium has its secrets and yields them grudgingly. This struggle has marked and rewarded the work of
artists as disparate as the great classical icon Michelangelo and the remarkable intuitive Kapo. At this stage
of his development in this area of Roberts work, it is to Kapo that the greatest similarity exists.
Roberts took to sculpting wood some years ago in response to an ancestral urge to conserve that which
we would destroy or discard. Carving into bits of wood that were produced by acts of destruction,
often in the name of progress, Roberts often found himself revealing forms that seemed to have been dormant in the wood.
His body of work includes several pieces that demonstrate this synergy of artist intuition and natures
will, but none more so than the two titled Heart Unfurled I and
Heart Unfurled II. These two pieces,
carved from wood, depict natures spirit in human form as it unfurls from the dense heart of wood. They
evoke a spirit of liberation that is probably representative of the artist own experience in their creation.
Heart Unfurled I
Madeira
33 "
Mr T
Madeira
28 "