60 Extraordinary Wood Sculptures Inspired By Nature And Myth, By Tach Pollard

Tach Pollard’s sculptures feel less like objects carved and more like beings revealed, as if they have been waiting, quietly, patiently, inside the grain of ancient wood. Rooted in the oak forests of the Sussex Weald, where he spent his childhood, Pollard’s work carries the weight of time, myth, and memory, echoing the slow intelligence of the natural world itself.

Self-taught and guided as much by intuition as by technique, Pollard began carving oak roots in his early twenties, allowing their twisted, organic forms to dictate direction rather than imposing his own will. What emerged was a deeply personal language, one that doesn’t separate artist from material, but fuses them.

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When Pollard later encountered hawthorn wood after moving to Buckinghamshire, his practice shifted into something even more elusive. Hawthorn, long steeped in British folklore, carries with it stories of fairy realms, sacred rituals, and ancient magic. These narratives don’t just inspire his work—they inhabit it. The figures that emerge are often liminal, suspended between human, spirit, and something entirely unknowable, as though they’ve stepped out from the edges of myth and into form.

The Oracles travelling the infinite path. Always found but never lost, the stars align as what this is.

There’s an undeniable sense that these sculptures are not static. They feel like moments caught mid-transformation—wood becoming story, shadow becoming presence. Pollard speaks of carving as a kind of dialogue: the play of light revealing hidden shapes, the scent of the wood responding as he works, the slow unfolding of something already alive within. In this way, each piece becomes less about what is made, and more about what is discovered, a quiet, ongoing dance between artist and the ancient voices held deep within the grain.

Twin Flame…….Is two anatomical hearts that I carved to synch into One Heart.

Eluvial….stops and listens to the reflection call her name.

As the wood burns the cracks form around her pulling the light deeper into the darkness, an obsidian mystery between two words.

The Totemic Piece made for The Bat Conservation Society’s 2026 show garden at Chelsea Flower show, called Black Amber.

Stag Witch..hovering over sand and stone looking for her Sea Witch family.

Burnt Crowman…Carved and Burnt Hawthorn Wood.

The night whispers from a dew pond on top of the hill. Full to the brim with the world, I look in but there is nothing to see but Stars kissing the edges, dancing on waves formed of ever new constellations that will die with the birth of the sun.