Bob McKay, woodturner
My adult life has been spent, almost... moreMy adult life has been spent, almost compulsively, making things of wood -- theatre scenery, houses, furniture and so on. But when I 'found' woodturning 20 years ago, I knew I was home. I like the scale, the quick wasting to rough form, and the subtlety of detail that's possible. My idea of fun is browsing through my stash of rough chunks, visualizing the best use of each feature of the wood and looking for the potential forms within. Each large log is given a family name and the pieces it yields are marked with initials to honour their common parentage.
I'm glad when my work invites handling and close scrutiny, because it can be an antidote for mass production and planned replacement ... a reminder of the natural processes in which we are immersed. Each piece is the result of the encounter between my flexible and evolving idea and the record of a tree's life as written in wood.
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