Rain drumming down on my roof puts a toothy grin on my face. It is not because I like to spite my wife or because my wife and I spent a long time in that dry part of the world, Grahamstown, but because I am hoping for a deluge. If that sounds as odd as my wife saving water when it is raining there is a reason. The power of a flood is exciting and productive. It jerks me out my humdrum existence, reminds me of just how small and powerless I am and the river brings me wood in abundance.

My new works are all made of wood that have washed onto the beach with the recent summer rains.

‘From the Navel to the Nest’ (now at The Art Room) is made from a piece of wood that I found at Port Shepstone. It has been eaten by shipworm, also known as Toledo worm or gribble. The holes create a random organic texture that is different and complimentary to the natural dark stained cracks and adds to the variety of marks on the surfaces. The darkness, mattness and shapes of the cracks and holes contrast with the polished surface and rich colour of the wood. Its form is loosely based on a bird and one of Henry Moore’s sculptures. (’Animal Head’, 1951.) Like Moore’s work the emphasis is on the internal dynamics of the sculpture or as he said “Form for its own sake and a truth to materials”.

‘Wolf’ (sold) is a piece of Wild Plum. Where the wood is revealed it is satin smooth and a beautiful rich red colour that contrasts with the dark corroded exterior. As is so often the case, the wood that survives these rivers is special. This piece is a part in a tree that moved while it was growing and as result the grain has been compressed into ‘ripples’. When the compression marks are polished they appear as darker and lighter bands of colour. The work is an interesting combination of contrasts and complimentary elements of colour, texture, line and form which make the work visually exciting.

The distinctiveness of the wood reminds me of a story I was told by an engineer whom I met when I lectured at University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg. He had worked on one of the bridges over the Umgeni River. Part of the process of the construction required core samples from the riverbed to be sent to Japan for testing and dating. Out of one of the cores came a piece of wood which the engineer washed and placed in his office. He told me that the next morning he could smell that the wood was tamboti and when the core was tested it was dated at ten thousand years old.

I have made a number of works with wood that has spent a long time in the mud, akin to what the engineer found and similar to bogwood. They are dark, sometimes throughout and sometimes revealing their original colour when deeply cut, and sometimes the wood is carbonised and charcoal like.

Three small works ‘Sleeping Bird’, ‘Feeling of Floating’ and ‘Cloaked Angel’ are from the “bog” and illustrate these attributes. These works are sketches as they are quickly done to pursue an idea, explore the material or to exploit the natural forms. They, to use Moore’s maxim, are “guided by the spirit of the material”. I consider these pieces of wood, like the bones I use, to be uniquely African materials but there are links with the Europeans. Bog wood and bones have been used for sculpture since man lived in the caves and more recently Henry Moore used bones as a starting point for many of his works.

I used to get a few of these pieces of wood by wading thigh deep into the water on the mud flats and feeling for them with my toes. The same floods that bring me my wood have brought less desirable things like polystyrene, plastic bottles, carcasses of animals, e-coli and flesh eating bacteria. However, of all those undesirable things the most feared has, like me, a toothy grin and like the snapper at home loves water and even though I have not seen it, I will respect it. The sign on the bank of my favourite river says: “Beware of the Crocodile” and now in order to get my bits of wood I, like my wife, look forward to a drought.