For Schoenthal, 2001. Letters cut into wooden beams

Poetry, philosophy, history, myth, garden design: Finlay’s work weaves knowledge from all these fields into texts, hewn stone and wooden sculptures. Born in the Bahamas in 1925, Finlay was called up into the army at the age of 17. After the war he shepherded sheep in Scotland, studied and wrote small plays. In 1966 he found a deserted farm in the hills of Southern Scotland, where he transformed a garden into an artwork until his death in 2006. Although he rarely left “Little Sparta” he stayed in Schöntal for several days in a month of June: he had twelve sentences engraved for eternity on wooden beams in St. Christopher’s Room.

For the artist’s archive, see the Wild Hawthorne Press