The process of sculpting each creature takes on a quasi-spiritual aspect in Quayle’s practice, resulting from a long process of sketching in front of her animal subject, and formed through layering up clay in a rapid process. “I want the fastest most direct, most subconscious way to work, vigorous and direct, the clay becomes inhabited. As old as mankind and coming directly from the ground, the clay seems to retain its primitive sense of earth, soil, mud and connection to the land.” Rendered at life scale, their presence in the gallery space is muscular and impressive, reanimating a sense of shared connection between living matter, an extra lingual sensation that has been lost in the progressive severing of the link between ourselves and nature rendered through technological process and the prevalence of the urban environment.

© Natasha Hoare, 2015