Emily Young's Wounded Angel

sculpture copyright Emily Young, photograph copyright Angelo Plantamura

You can see this beautiful angel (called Wounded Angel I) in Kew Gardens, in London, or you can see a photograph of him in Tacit Hill's A Light Touch and a Long View which was published in June and is full full full of colour plates of Emily Young's sculpture.

Emily Young's angels truly touch me. I first saw one at the London Art Fair several years ago and have searched them out ever since. This one is part of her Earth Angel project ... and in my workroom, among the piles of paper, work in progress (not to mention the other people's work in progress that I'm editing), in pride of place on the floor is a copy of A Light Touch and a Long View and it's usually open at this page because this angel's expression is almost unbearably touching to me. But he can also send me into reflective mood, and I often end up in a (story) place I hadn't intended heading for ... he is, sometimes, like a story guardian angel. When I'm lost for words, or tired of editing, or anything really, I look at him.

Emily Young also writes about the stone she sculpts. She writes about the 'stink' that sometimes comes from a piece of stone when she cuts into it, a stink that has been trapped in that piece of stone for millennia. She talks about the age of the stone and the stories hidden in the stone, the stories the stone carries.

Looking at her work is worth not writing for. But, unusually for a MAT, it also sets me on the road to writing.