Rosie Musgrave MRSS

Many years ago I studied figurative sculpture in clay, wood and stone at Sir John Cass and City and Guilds Art School in London.  I moved to Cornwall to work a small-holding and raise my children, and then to Devon where I worked as a therapist in Complementary Health before returning to full-time stone carving some 25 years ago.

Since my earliest childhood I have felt attracted to the beauty, stillness and quiet presence of this ancient material.  Much of the limestone that I carve was laid down in the Jurassic age at least 140 million years ago.  Before I break into a block my planning is quite precise with sketches and maquettes, although later the carving will take on its own momentum.  It is often hard, slow, contemplative work as the cut stone unwraps its secrets...striations of colour, fossils, even pockets of gas, trapped within this substance of time.

As I grow older I am increasingly drawn to the complexities of simple forms.  I seek them out...the shape of trees silhouetted, the lie of the land framed against the sky.  I see my carvings as landscapes cutting their edges into the enclosing air; that point of meeting, the surface tension, the relationship between that which is visible and that which is invisible.

Placing a sculpture into its surroundings brings a changing nature to its carved form; light playing over a simple curve, the darkening of shadows, a sense of intimacy and wholeness, a touchstone of continuity and reassurance in a fast changing and uncertain world.