As a student at St. Martin’s Dido Crosby swam against the fashionable tide of “good ideas” by working figuratively and, even worse, by making animals! She stuck to her guns and in so doing has proved that passion for subject matter, perseverance and a strong work ethic pays off. Years on the success of this strategy is evidenced in this body of work.

Animals have been represented in cave paintings and from then on their forms have been depicted throughout human history, used as symbols of independence, loyalty, nobility, evil, and power. Artists have not always copied natural forms; they have exaggerated or enhanced features to impress, to inspire, to illustrate myths, to heal and to install terror. Animals in their various guises bring magic into our lives. It is inevitable that this tradition should be kept alive by contemporary artists.

Animals have reappeared in fashionable galleries, they have reappeared as corpses suspended in formaldehyde, exploited to create sensation, to serve an idea, to carry a title with no aesthetic intervention from the artist. Those are soulless wonders that can be comprehended at a glance. Nothing could be further from these works, which command close inspection and speak for themselves without the addition of encyclopedic titles.

“Never work with children or animals” is a piece of advice most commonly doled out to people working in the performing arts. Here also lie pitfalls for sculptors and painters. Apart from the odd domestic pet included in our daily life, our relationship with farm and wild animals is, at best, second hand, at worst, non-existent. Meat is anonymously packaged, unconnected to the living, breathing flesh that is comfortably tucked away in anthropomorphic childhood illustrations, caricatured, high on the cute index, miles away from the brutal magnificent creatures that share the planet. Dido’s sculpture is not cute; it is not sentimental or ornamental. It does not sensationalise, gesture or caricature. It celebrates creatures form the engineered breeds of domestic pets to the ancient stag, the sinister raven.

These animals are not boneless; they are palpable from their skeletons out to their skins. The eye must respond to something living and although these works are static they are strong, they are vital, they seem to be about to move. They have a life of their own, independent of the animals they represent. Animals have an alert grace even when they are in repose; the challenge is to capture the otherness of their nature as creatures in their own world. The Stag tests the air before moving off, from another view the interior of the sculpture is revealed allowing us to read the structure.

The cat is arrested mid stride, prowling the night. The Raven, like Ted Hughes' dreadful crow “makes a noise suspiciously like laughter”. The smooth full surface of the beached Black Sow accentuates her weight as she waits for her piglets to suckle, an epitome of motherhood. The elegant Roe Doe looks ahead, light on her fragile legs.

Some of these works are portraits. It is not just breed that distinguishes these dogs one from another. They each have an individual pulse, they present features we are familiar with, and they have an inner life that shines through. The Terriers are, of course, contemplating a sudden fast move and the Black Pug does seem pugnacious and, what is more, it looks at the world with certain ennui.

Sculpture is unable to give detailed natural colour unless it is skinned with paint, denying and disguising the weight and texture of the underlying material and creating havoc with three dimensional perceptions. Patination reveals the chosen metal but, nevertheless, the surface relief needs to be deepened in order to mimic the effect of colour. The definition on the face of the Pug captures all the subtleties of the black. The violent scored marks on the Raven match the loud character of this bird as well as implying the subtle shades of its feathers.

The surfaces are carefully considered, considerable skill is involved in making anatomy not only correct but believable; sculpture cannot correct its own stance and yet it is standing for a living creature that cannot remain stock still for very long. Weight, mass and verisimilitude must be evoked without sacrificing intuition and creativity. Dido achieves this balancing act between technique and imagination to make work that sings.

Dido has a practical as well as an inventive turn of mind, her approach to making is direct, unaffiliated to any theory of art. Here is detached observation in tandem with a close affinity to the subjects who are realised with vigour, humour and dignity. These works are not merely pictorial, they are not monuments, they are not vessels for a narcissistic personality, they bear witness, and they give pleasure.

Viv Levy, MA RCA, November 2011