Walking Through

Surls, a muscular farm dweller from Splendora, Texas, works with whole branches and roots, artfully pegged and jointed together so their knotty, straight-from-the-ground appearance is kept even as they turn into parodies of the human figure…they posture and writhe on point with a sort of evilly humorous grace; they summon up nursery horrors, tree demons, swamp critters. They have some of the charged, crude intensity of New Mexican santos.

Surls is a good craftsman who does not make a parade of technique.  He lacks laconic effects – nothing too beautiful; storytelling rather than elocution.  His preferred tools are the chain saw, the ax and the blowtorch, with which he 'paints' areas of sooty shadow into the wood.  The scorching makes his pieces look even more like visitors from Down Below.  You can laugh at the devil, but not too hard or long. - Robert Hughes, Time Magazine, April 2, 1984.