David Nash

Description

The oval has been used frequently by Nash, and has been expressed in many different ways. Only slightly more complex in form than the pyramid, globe and cube which recur time and again in his sculpture and drawings, in a wide range of scale colour, wood and treatment, the egg has taken its place in Nash's repertoire and has been explored by him in many different ways. Often as sculptures they exist in pairs.

Egg shapes may differ greatly one from another, some longer, pointed, blunt, rounder, flatter, stretched, linear or solid. A symbol of fertility and with the potential for many, a form which may contain inner, possibly unknown life and energy, the egg as starting point for sculpture, offers many possibilities. David Nash has cut eggs vertically with the grain of the wood to form delicate fissures, horizontally against the grain, regularly, randomly, has carved patterns, reliefs and repeated shapes of mosaic as in these two oak pieces.

Mosaic Eggs recall Imperial Russian Easter Eggs, decorated with fine jewels, but these are hewn large from massive oaks, and the tessellations represented by deep carving. Robust in form and texture, these eggs sit within the woodland, as much at one with the landscape as fallen fir cones. Their relationship is carefully considered, one on its side, the other vertical with space to walk between them, so a slightly discordant note enters. The comfortable notion of nestling eggs is excluded, yet the eye draws them together to read the sculpture as a whole.

Nash's first piece in a series of egg forms was Mosaic Egg 1988. In an exhibition at the Annely Juda Gallery which carried this title, Nash wrote:

- Mosaic Egg

- The Mosaic, a whole made up of many

- The egg, whole in itself out of which many may emanate