Creative Wood Art

As both an ancient and contemporary art medium, wood has been used to create sculpture, crafts, and functional objects of art. An extensive array of wood types has been used in the creation of artistic objects. Wood finishes have ranged from natural to painted or stained. Due to the organic nature of wood, many of the earliest wood objects have deteriorated due to time; however, wood has been used by people to create artistically rendered objects prior to recorded history. Even today, its artistic uses are extensive.

Wood carving is one of the oldest arts of humankind. Wooden spears from the Middle Paleolithic, such as the Clacton Spear, show that people have engaged in utilitarian woodwork for millennia. Indeed the roots of the craft go so far back that, at least where timber is present, the use of wood exists as a universal in human culture as both a means to create or enhance tools and as a medium for artistry.