Artistic

The "Tabernacle" was without question my deepest and most spiritual work to date, when it was completed in early 2003. It is a "palindromatic" creation, thus there are a multiplicity of ways to observe and appreciate the work. First and foremost is its unique physical form, comprising the actual outer underlayer of bark, and which is delineated in light-colored varnish. Contrasted with this is the inner underlayer of bark, from which the wood has been cut away from the inside, which is varnished in a darker, russet color.

This second inner perspective also functions simultaneously as an "outer" perspective when the third element of the work, the actual "Tabernacle", comes into play. One of the most salient and obvious figures on the outer layer is a faithful heart-shaped root protrusion, and originally, "The Heart Laid Bare" was the original intended title, as this heart-shaped object had revealed itself to me as a central element of the piece. As I progressed into the inner reaches of the wood, there was a point at which I felt the chisel going through solid wood and entering a space full of dusty, soft material, totally unsuitable for the sculpture - yet it was still surrounded on all sides by solid wood! As I gingerly progressed into the space, I realised that it was the place where the seed of the tree had germinated. Once there was a "structure" taking form inside the emptied space, the intricacies of the stairs and platforms convinced me that "The Tabernacle of the Heart Laid Bare" was the most fitting and final term.

Read more: The Tabernacle of the Heart Laid Bare

February, 2015

This sculpture is hewn from the stump of a jacaranda tree which was felled and uprooted in about 1999. I first worked on it in 2001/2, just after my daughter Jireh was born, but left off in mid-2002, as I had not the faintest idea how to proceed. Twelve years later, in October, 2014, I suddenly knew in an instant what to do, and so I recommenced work.

From the very beginning, Mama Warthog, as an archetypal beast, dominated the piece from the cut upwards, along with her two twin daughters, springing forth from the left side of her head. She with her nine tusks, in varying degrees of growth, maturity, and decay, and her daughters springing forth fully grown and fully tusked – four are visible on the lower daughter, five on the upper – although as yet their eyes remain hidden within.

Behind, above, and around her and her offspring reigns primal carnage, hunt or be hunted. At her back soars upwards the magnificent beast with yellow and black hood, and gaping maw. It is engulfing a large green tortoise-like being, for whom all hope is lost.

Just below and to the side swoops a root which has fascinated me for its multiplicity from the start. Beginning with the green behemoth with mammoth red tongue and fiery eye, roaring up and engulfing the silver mollusc, it transforms into the beautiful and exotic ultramarine and tangerine-coloured sea serpent (with somewhat Picasso-esque eyes) and the green and gold snake, consuming the last of its meal, a smaller reptile of whom only the brown and yellow tip of the tail remains as the remnant of its meal. The somewhat cumbersome beast in blue has no chance of surviving the aeons of evolution.

And ah, yes, the whale! It can be viewed from three different angles to reveal three different animals, one eye for each side, and then from above so as both eyes are visible. Its target is presumably far above the sculpture.

As far as the fountain of gold is concerned, this part of the title only came about late on, when I had chosen gold as the color of delineation between and among the figures. From the bottom to the top, gold runs throughout as symbolic of the value of all life.