John de Lang, Wood's End Studio • 705 689 8831 • www.WoodsEnd.ca • A Member of the Arts at the Albion artist co-operative
It’s a known fact that artists need a deeply personal working space to feed their unique creativity. Hence the strong appeal of studio tours: people want to see the environment that nurtures the art.
For bird-carver John de Lang, his south Muskoka workplace fits the bill perfectly, placed among imaginative gardens, flowering trees and shrubs, and a large pond with natural boulders. Christened ‘Wood’s End Studio’, the name is a double entendre, suggesting both its site at the edge of the woods as well as the creation of an exquisite end product from a piece of wood.
A painstaking art form, requiring precise measurements, textures, and shading, the process begins with a basic block of tupelo, a hard but lightweight wood from Florida’s Everglades. With the pose chosen and pattern sketched, the rough form is carved and the contours finessed with a high-speed grinder. Each feather is burned to produce texture, followed by thin washes of layered paint for subtle depths of colour. “I want to make my work true to life,” John says. “Nature is not always symmetrical, so I capture the irregularities that make each bird unique.”
John’s innovative mounts often reflect the authentic habitat, with sculpey clay flowers and brass foil leaves; while others are more abstract, such as the black ceramic base that supports a pair of miniature mute swans in flight. Chattering venetian blinds one windy night inspired their use for bulrush stalks, with tops formed from sawdust and glue. He has simulated barley from epoxy, scotch thistle from painted wool, and achieved rustic effects with a blow torch.
A true bird lover, John appreciates that his carvings give people a close look at what can usually only be glimpsed fleetingly at a distance. His birds reveal the graceful form and delicate feathering that elude even the most devoted nature photographer or bird-watcher. And inspiration is always close at hand, with the native birds fluttering right outside the windows of his forest hideaway.
Photos: Robert Nelson
