Artist Research: Sally Matthews and Carl Emmanuel Wolff

Sally Matthews and Carl Emmanuel Wolff both work with animal sculpture, with Matthews using a variety of materials such as natural wood and earth as well as scrap metals. Wolff works with more conventional, classic sculpture materials like bronze and his works seem to be displayed in more conventional physical contexts such as gallery spaces or in public urban environments where the choice of material would be durable and safe in a busy, public surrounding.

Matthews' works are more abstracted, creating representations of the animal forms that often become part of the environment around them. Matthews makes works driven by her passion and enthusiasm for animals, and her strong observations of animals and their behaviour lead to works

that have a sense of life and movement..

This sense of liveliness and animation is what I take the most from Matthews' works, as I want my own animal sculptures to not come across lifeless so I suspend them or try construct them in ways that give an illusion of movement. Her use of materials is also interesting, as I have worked with plastics and cheap material and she works with scavenged and scrap material. I feel I could expand my materials while still working with financially cheap or recycled material for further development of my work and to experiment with challenging myself through a medium and see what restrictions that would cause or extra things it would add.