In this extract from Llew Summers: Body and Soul, author John Newton looks at the period in which Summers was 50-something, newly single and learning to surf.
Llew’s angels never have arms. Some have cherubic legs and bottoms, but the aim in doing away with arms was to make them more “other” and potentially more disquieting. The darkest by far is the imposing Guardian Angel (2007). On New Year’s Day 2007 came the news that Douschka, [his late partner] Rose’s daughter, had taken her own life, leaving behind a husband and two small children. Like many parents of suicides, Llew, as he admitted at the funeral service, was not merely grief-stricken but angry. The same complex feelings informed the brooding work that he made shortly afterwards, first carved in oak, then cast in bronze and finally enlarged in concrete.