These pieces are built up from inanimate stuff – bags of plaster or blocks of wax. They grow from wire to bone, slab or powder to flesh and fur. Then another transformation; the casting into bronze - more processes; working on the wax, the metal and the colour. From idea and observation to line, evolving through several material changes to become creatures strangely and certainly themselves.

Crosby works slowly, completing two or three pieces a year; she only makes things that really hold her interest.

In Oman recently Crosby was captivated by the Mountain Gazelle, a desert beauty that might materialise for a moment and then vanish, able to survive on water collected as dew collected on her fur. That delicacy and ghostliness is symbolised as a mist-white patina.

The painstakingly put together ‘Antelope’ was carved from many pieces of recycled wood, with beach pebble eyes. It is something between a votive Indian bhuta sculpture and a piece of furniture, worked on every summer for five years.

The extremes of variation in dog breeds, so admired by Darwin, inspired four differing sculptural approaches: Every curl of the ‘Poodle’ was rolled in wax as if to decorate an ancient Chinese bronze. The flanks of the ‘Dachshund’ are polished to a Jeff Koonsian shine. ‘Black Pug’ is a Churchillian portrait while ‘Sitting Terrier’ is given a loose matted hairiness.

‘Sitting Boar’ is a rougher stouter reflection on Il Porcellino in Florence, whose snout is touched for luck. Boar are wild again in Britain, and like Roe Deer and foxes, probably will have seen you before you see them.

Crosby’s creatures occupy a no-man’s land between sculpture (a human view, imbued with meaning) - and animal (statues of beasts). They are solid, believable and real, they sit or stand still, watching you, meeting your eye or looking away disinterested. They are not
caught-in-the-act, you are.

Henry Beesley, March 2009