Any old iron will do for Nairnshire scrap metal sculptor
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Eve McDonald was so distraught after the death of her horse she turned to art to help her recover.
Now the 63-year-old has just completed her 13th scrap metal sculpture – an eight-foot alligator.
Mrs McDonald said she was inspired to fulfil a childhood ambition to make sculptures out of scrap metal after the loss of her horse, Amber, and then suffering an injury to both her wrists in a fall from a new animal.
The fact she hadn’t even picked up a paint brush, far less a welding machine, didn’t deter her and she started making her sculptures during lockdown.
Mrs MacDonald, from Lethen in Nairn, said: “I wouldn’t call myself an artist at all. But other people have started to call me one, so I suppose that is what I am.
“I did not know what to do with myself after I lost my horse last year. I had a riding accident and my wrists were in a very poor state. It meant I was not able to get another horse.
“I had always wanted to make a scrap metal sculpture after seeing them on a childhood visit to Traquair House, in the Scottish Borders.
“I wanted to make a mountain hare, as that is my favourite wild animal, but I didn’t know how to weld. I put out messages all over the place to try and get someone to help me.
“It was then that someone pointed me in the direction of one of my near neighbours – Michael Job, who runs Black Ox Arts. He helped me make the sculpture with a horse shoe to place over Amber’s grave.”
She said once she had got a taste for it, she wanted to make more and bigger pieces.
“So I asked Michael if he could teach me, and he did.
“The equipment then lay in the garage from January and I didn’t do anything with it. But in April I decided it was time to start.”
The sculptures include a Highland cow, dogs, birds, plant pot holders, dragonflies and monsters from the deep – all made with scrap metal that has been donated to Mrs McDonald
She laughed: “I am much more comfortable welding than I would ever be with a watercolour brush.”
See Facebook at Eve’s Scrap Art for more of Mrs McDonald’s work.
