Japanese Artist Carves Dream-Like Creatures Out of Wood

Japanese sculpture Yoshimasa Tsuchiya carves fantastical beasts out of wood. His creations seem at first glance to be lightweight, delicate almost. Yet amazingly, he makes them out of large blocks of wood, using a chainsaw and other heavy machinery.

Other than wood, Tsuchiya also makes use of crystals, placing them as shiny eyes to his lifelike sculptures. The end result is something out of a fairy tale, his creations half-realistic half cartoon-like.

Yoshimasa explored various mediums in college: clay, metals, stone, and finally, woodcarving. “When I carved wood for the first time, I thought, ‘this is it,’” said the artist in an interview with Beautiful Bizarre Magazine. “I felt the comfortable feeling like gnawing on fruits when I carve the wood.”

Yoshimasa envisions his animals “as if something is borrowing the posture of the animals and it’s suddenly appearing” in front of him. “Nobody has ever seen unicorns but I imagine the shape of them by knowing the characteristics of their horns as medicine and that they don’t get attached to, or domesticated by, humans.”

Check out some his mesmerizing work below.

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