Beth Carter @ Beaux Arts Bath

Beth Carter’s world of sculpture and drawing features a cornucopia of dream-like, circus, or half man-half beast shape-shifters who at their core embody the contrasts  characterised in Robert Browning’s ‘dangerous edge of things’- honest thieves, tender murderers, superstitious atheists.   A wolf appears to contemplate his kill pityingly, while a fox steals into the night with a pheasant, which on closer inspection he holds delicately, in human hands, the bird appearing potentially injured rather than ripe for plucking.
Some of Beth’s sculptures, despite engendering intuitive, emotional or animal responses, take as their cue her own life experience. Particularly significant is the death in recent years of her artist father, a physically imposing,  larger-than- life figure who was prone to depression.