Wood Whisperer: My Woodcarving Journey: Wood Whisperer, #3

By Josef Peeters

Dare to dream. Dare to be yourself. Allow imagination to soar above opposition along your path to creativity. Be inspired by Josef on his wood carving journey to find the spirit within the wood and himself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Josef Peeters
• Release date: Jul 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386223733

Josef Peeters

Josef Peeters, born in Dusseldorf Germany, in 1961, immigrated with his parents and two brothers to Australia in 1964. He became a naturalised Australian soon after his eighteenth birthday. After a lacklustre education spent in numerous schools across Queensland, Josef left at age fifteen to begin work as an assistant projectionist in the original Regent Theatre in Brisbane, before it became a multi-screen complex. Josef has followed artistic pursuits in performance, literary, and sculptural genres without ever gaining success or notoriety in any field. He now continues to write and self-publish for his own benefit and pleasure while maintaining a Caravan Park business with his second wife at Moulamein NSW, Australia.

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DEDICATION

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To my wife, friend, and mentor- Sandy Peeters.

CONTENTS

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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To all the aspiring artists, woodcarvers, sculptors, painters and creative souls out there who do not feel confident enough to give it a try. If I can do it, so can you. It is never too late.

Artistry

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Nearing the age of fifty, and never having so much as whittled a stick, it was time to surrender to an innate yearning haunting me since my youth. At the time I had a partner who had proven herself a talented artist in many genres, though her passion was for mosaics. I had only dabbled in artistic pursuits for most of my life in the performance and literary arenas without much in the way of 'success'. As subjective as that term is, it was my opinion that I had not yet attained the level of artistry to which I aspired.

In my youth, those aspirations were rather lofty and quite frankly, unattainable, to a young man in my circumstances at the time. I had to wait many years before I was with a partner who encouraged and supported my ideas unconditionally before I was able to contemplate an endeavour of that nature. I loved wood in all its varying shapes, uses and configurations, though I never seriously contemplated woodcarving. The idea of bashing away at a bloody great lump of wood with a chisel and mallet held no appeal at all for this old bloke.

Everything changed for me the day I attended an agricultural show where I watched a demonstration intended to show farmers how to utilise an attachment to their chainsaw for cutting post rail notches into fence posts. In between demonstrations, the person wielding the chainsaw tried his hand at some lettering in a sign he had crafted with the saw. That was the moment I recognised a chainsaw as a means of removing wood almost effortlessly, doing away with endless hours of menial labour. Well, the joke really was on me. Little did I know when I had that epiphany how delusional I actually was. Years later I smile whenever I think about that naive thought at that time.

While a chainsaw is perfectly capable of removing much more wood at a tremendously greater pace than by hand, the amount of effort required remains enormous, and the removal of wood to produce a shape is not by any means the most labour intensive task involved in woodcarving. When I finally got hooked on the art of woodcarving I found labouring a pleasure rather than the chore I had first envisioned. Toiling away at a work of art for hours at a time became a therapeutic pastime affording me untold pleasure and peace of mind. A deep, tranquil state of calm descended upon me while carving in my backyard in suburban Melbourne, Victoria. All the normal issues of life melted away the moment my brain engaged on the project before me. It was like