Sally Matthews - Wolves

Wolves – This is not just our Land  -This is their Land Image by Richard Harris

Grizedale is very important to my work - such a place helps my work to be seen not as sculpture but as animals connected to their landscape. In this case wolves, freed - if only in the mind - seen through the trees - jolting our instinctive reaction. It is this unique imprint that inspires me, their different form, movement, smell and nature - their presence.

Working in the forest to make the wolves, binds the work and myself for a short while, to the forest. Watching and listening to the wildlife around the site as I work quietly. Getting water from the stream and letting the water wash over my hands. Searching for bits of wolf like brash and roots. Mixing pine needles and forest floor with the cement and smearing the work with earth from the ‘path where the wolf has walked ‘

My work is in praise of animals, to remind us of our spiritual and physical need for them and the incalculable example their nature provides us with. Wolves are our evolutionary companions, but our power over their habitat and existence is too great. The last wolf in England was perhaps chased from Cartmel in the 14th Century and killed near the coast. Grizedale seems the perfect forest in which to encounter wolves - there are none.