Key Works

Oviloo Tunnillie’s (1949–2014) carving career spanned over forty-five years, from 1966 until 2012, when she became too ill to work. Oviloo began carving conventional representations of wildlife, but in the 1980s she gradually abandoned these for the personal and contemporary subjects that would define her work. Three years spent in southern tuberculosis hospitals as a child resulted in carved scenes of stark isolation, while the purchase of a television later in life would inspire sculptures of sports figures such as football players and a downhill skier. Whether grief-stricken or full of hope, her human figures express intense emotions solely through the medium of stone.